WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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- [Voiceover] La Cuki
Alarcon was late to work

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on the night that his
roommate disappeared,

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which is why he's still
around to tell what happened.

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Outsiders called them all homosexuals,

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but the sex workers, some who
lived as women all the time,

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others who dressed as
women, primarily on the job,

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called each other crazies.

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(light orchestral music)

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As Alarcon reached the opposite corner,

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he could see his friends were still there.

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He hesitated for a minute
before crossing the street

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and that's when he realized
the Locas were not alone.

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Four tall men in ski-masks
were throwing them

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in the back of a green truck,

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clubbing them with the
butts of their guns.

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This was the beginning of the civil war

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that consumed El Salvador until 1992.

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The United Nations' NGO's, journalists

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and scholars have sought
to uncover what happened

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to many of the more than 75,000

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who were killed or disappeared
during the conflict.

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But no one has ever investigated

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what happened to Alarcon's friends.

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There was his roommate Cristi,

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whom he remembers as a gentle 26 year old,

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who would bring him
gifts of coats or shoes,

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from trips she would frequently take

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to Guatemala or Mexico.

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Another was Veronica, from San Bartolo,

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near the Honduran border,

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who was so pretty what her
clients would sometimes

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insist on having their
pictures taken with her.

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Carolina was so well put together

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that she'd sometimes get into trouble.

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She looked all woman, Alarcon said

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and her clients would get violent

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when they discovered she
was trans as she undressed.

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Alarcon is one of the only witnesses

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to their disappearance
as who is still alive.

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But the story of that
night is well remembered.

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It's been passed down

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from generation to generation

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of trans-sex workers in
the country's capital.

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It's been retold so many times,

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it can sometimes be hard to
separate fact from legend.

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Passed down in the same
way many families retell

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the haunting mysteries that
still linger from the war.

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Alarcon hid from the men rounding
up his friends that night

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by throwing himself to the
ground in a small garden.

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He tried to slink away
after watching the men

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pile his friends into the truck,

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but more armed men were patrolling

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the surrounding streets.

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When the coast was clear,

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he went back to work on the corner.

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Within minutes, a client
had come and picked him up.

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Alarcon figured he'd see
Cristi in a day or two,

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which is how long the cops
usually held sex workers

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after a routine vice raid.

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But Cristi never came home,

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none of them did.

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Alarcon went to the police
stations to try and find her,

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he even hired a lawyer, but
the cops made fun of him

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and hinted that his
friends were already dead.

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El Salvador's 12 year civil war

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had its roots in political battles

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that had been going on for half a century

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and in 1980, it blew up into

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one of the last bloodiest
conflicts of the Cold war.

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Bodies were being dumped at a
rate of more than 150 a week,

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which the US Embassy
would tally in regular

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Violence Week In Review cables,

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even as the US grew closer
with the El Salvadoran regime.

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"The death squads' victims

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"were killed in the usual fashion,"

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reported a cable from the
US Embassy to Washington.

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"Kidnapped by a group of armed
men who appear to civilians,

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"taken away in ubiquitous pick-up trucks,

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"shot or strangled or both,

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"then dumped along the roadsides."

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But those who lost their friends

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believe they died because of politics.

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The most intriguing part of the legend

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of the disappearances from
the savior of the world

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and the part that is probably

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the most impossible to pin down,

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is that they were killed to
cover up a government secret.

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They were taken that
night, the story goes,

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in a hunt for two sex workers
who had evidence of a crime,

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evidence they'd stolen from an american.

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Some of the Locas thought
the american was a diplomat,

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while others believed he was a reporter.

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No one really knew why
he was in the country,

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but they all knew what he looked like.

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He was a big spender who
always tried two at a time.

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The two he picked up
shortly before the raid,

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stole his briefcase.

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Inside were some cameras
that the Locas believed

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had been used to photograph
some kind of government crime.

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All of this might be easily shrugged off

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as the kind of conspiracy theory

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that proliferates in wartime,

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except several sources said they heard it

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from people directly involved.

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La Cuki Alarcon said the
american came to his bar,

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offering a reward to get his cameras back.

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Another sex worker, who
asked not to be named,

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said she'd been warned
that a hunt for the thieves

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was underway by a sergeant
in the National Guard,

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who was a regular client.

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Several told us that one
of the thieves had a wife,

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a sistander woman named Sonya,

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who lived in San Salvador
for at least another 30 years

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and would sometimes talk
about how the authorities

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eventually dug the
briefcase out of her patio

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with the cameras still inside.

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Everyone believes both thieves escaped,

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but they're a lot of
different stories about

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what happened to the ones who disappeared,

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beneath the savior of the world.

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They're tortured by having
their fingernails pulled out

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and their breasts torn off,

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or they were dragged to death by horses

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at the infantry barracks.

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They were dumped in a hole,

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on the road to the
notorious Mariona Prison.

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The men said to have taken the locals away

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wore no uniforms,

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so there's no way to be sure
which force had taken them.

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El Salvador is filled
with stories like these,

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people turning into ghosts because

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unanswered questions are
all that remains of them.

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And this story particularly hangs over

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the trans-sex workers,
still trying to survive

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in San Salvador, where gang violence

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and random hate crimes have claimed

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at least as many lives
as the war once did.

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(people yelling in the background)