My first day: Miguel Santos
I had always played the robber when I was kid playing 'cops and robbers.' For as long as I remembered, I had always wanted to be in the Cartel. My family was poor. We were going nowhere. This was the only future for us. We had all heard of the stories of glory and adventure, of the gun running and firefights. The Cartel was where we could be free, we thought, and of course to make big money in the process. So I signed up. No brainer, right? They took me in immediately. Said they knew my cousin, who recommended me. Of course, I didn't want to let them down. Or my cousin (we all had a cousin in the Cartel). They told me on my first day that I had a very important job. I was going to be a cameraman for a very important movie. Wow, I thought. This was different than what I had expected. I had thought maybe I would be on guard duty. Maybe they would start me off light and have me guard like a stash of weed. But whatever. I was eager to please. I wanted this job bad. I showed up on my first day, and they handed me a pretty fancy handheld camcorder. HD and everything. Great audio too. I was told we were going to start right away. No kidding, huh?

They brought in a girl. Tiny thing. Very pretty. Looked American. She had light brown hair, blue eyes, creamy skin. She looked frightened. Start recording, they barked at me. So I did. I didn't know what was going to happen next. But it shook my very soul. They stripped her naked and taunted her. Make sure you get all of this action, Miguelito, they shouted. There were about a dozen of them, surrounding her. I knew a couple of them from my neighborhood. I knew I had to do everything I was told. At first I didn't want to let them down, or my cousin, or my neighborhood. But I started to feel scared. I got the feeling if I didn't do what I was told, that maybe something bad was going to happen to me. Or my family. They knew everyone in my family. I had a bad feeling about what was going to happen next, but I just kept filming. I think I was more scared than anything else. I was too scared to stop.

She looked so ashamed. I just knew she had never been naked before in front of others. The men jeered at her. They slapped her in the face. They grabbed her nipples and twisted them. She shrieked. They grabbed her ass and squeezed hard. Pushed her onto the floor and yanked her back up on her feet by her hair. Puta americana, they yelled, as they groped and slapped her face, breasts, and even her pussy. She was sobbing. And then a few of them started to undo the buttons on their trouser. They took turns raping her. Miguelito, they would yell, get her face! Get her face! Make sure you record her crying. Are you close enough to where you can see the tears? Miguelito! Miguelito! Get a shot of her pussy, man! Look at that! It's oozing blood. You see that cream? That's my cum, man! I still got plenty of that where that came from!

They took turns violently raping her on the concrete floor. We were in a warehouse, so her screams really echoed within the walls. Every now and they shouted at me to zoom in on her pussy or her asshole, or her face. After an hour or two, the floor around her was smeared with streaks of blood and semen. Her thighs themselves were lined with interconnecting streams of dried clotted blood. Hey Miguelito, you should get in on this action, man! No, man, I'm good, I said. Are you a faggot, Miguelito? What's wrong with you man, you don't wanna have fun with us? No, I'm good, man, I said. I'm just here to do my job, man. Hey if you're a faggot Miguel, you can do her in the ass. Just close your eyes and pretend she's a boy. She's pretty tight in both holes, but she's even tighter now than she was before. You think it's because she likes it, Miguelito? You sure you don't want in on this, Miguelito?

I could tell that she was swollen from the brutality and cruelty of the rapes, and if it had hurt to begin with, well it sure as hell was probably hurting more and more as this never ending gang-rape went on. And it went on. For hours. The sound of skin slapping on skin was endless. The grunts from the men. The grunting and moaning from the girl, who was now too tired to scream. I wasn't doing anything but filming, and I was already getting exhausted. But it got worse. When they were done raping her (it seemed like forever, since several of them had a multiple rounds with her), they strung her up from ceiling, upside down, with her legs pulled wide apart from separate ropes. They cuffed her hands and hung a metal weight from the center of the chain linking the cuffs together. One of them brought back a broom with a wooden handle, and another brought a metal wire coat hanger. The broom handle was snapped, leaving only three feet of its wooden handle to use. The wire coat hanger was unwound and straightened, leaving about two and a half feet of thin wire. They took turns whipping her with the wire and beating her with the wooden handle. You could tell she was exhausted, though when the metal wire sung through the air with a hiss, and cut through her delicate skin, she screamed, as tiny droplets of blood sprayed into the air. When the wooden handle struck her flesh, bruising deeply the muscles in her limbs, she grunted and made guttural noises like a wild animal being gutted alive. When one man tired from the swinging, another would replace him. They spared no part of her, save her neck and face. They beat her arms and shoulders, her back and chest. Her belly. Her ass. Her thighs, calves, and even the soles of her feet. They struck with particular ferocity and frequency her genitals and breasts, as these seemed to produce the most rejuvenated and agonizing cries. When they were done, her creamy white skin had turned into a fearsome pattern of criss-crossing deep purple bruises and angry red, bleeding welts. I think probably the most disturbing moment was when one of the men noticed she was urinating over herself. He called me over to get a close-up of the piss leaving her swollen pussy, and capture its flow as it traveled down her torso, mixing with the blood that clung to her skin. I captured in great detail on my camera as the piss slithered down towards the floor up her neck, soaking her hair, and dripping, forming a salmon-colored pool of liquid just under her head. I felt like I had lost my humanity at that point.

And this was just the beginning, they said.