MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Arelis Hernández, a reporter with The Washington Post. And today we are talking about the issues raised in the Emmy-nominated docuseries “Trafficked.” My guest is the show’s host and executive producer Mariana van Zeller. Welcome.

MS. VAN ZELLER: Hi, Arelis. How are you?

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Very good. Thanks for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

MS. VAN ZELLER: Thank you for having me.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: So, let’s start where you left off. In season one you covered everything from cocaine and fentanyl to pimps and telemarketing. Where do you pick up in season two?

MS. VAN ZELLER: You know, in many ways I’d say that we go deeper but we also go wider in season two. We covered, for example, the rise of white supremacy that initially at first thought you wouldn’t think is something that falls into a black market category. But what we realized when we started reporting on it is that it falls very much and it operates very much like a black market. But instead of putting drugs in people’s bodies or guns in people’s hands, these global networks are putting ideas, and very dangerous ideas, in people’s heads. So, that was one of the episodes we did this season that sort of shows that we’re sort of going not only deeper but also wider, because things that you might not think fall under the category of black markets certainly do.

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MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, I don’t want to give anything away, but you do quite a bit of traveling for this particular season. Can you tell me, you know, where you went, where you traveled this season, and how you did that--did all that shooting during a global pandemic?

MS. VAN ZELLER: It’s absolutely crazy. You know, this is already a really challenging series to put together just in terms of access and everything that we have to go through. But--and then after that, a global pandemic, we started filming in July of 2020, and we filmed for almost a year straight. And it was--certainly was not easy. There was a lot of restrictions. We obviously needed to make sure that the team was safe, that we were keeping everybody safe. So, there--I think I've done more COVID tests than anyone else on the planet, me and my team and--but we were able to do it.

And you know, one of the things that we realized pretty early on is that whenever there’s an economic downturn, whenever people are losing their jobs, they turn to global black--to black markets. And there was an explosion in black markets during the pandemic. And actually, one of the episodes we did was about romance scammings. And it's very much a crime that was sort of born during the pandemic, and it fed of the loneliness that so many of us felt during that time.

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MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, I want to dig into that a little bit. For people who are sort of unaware and live their lives sort of blissfully ignorant of this underworld, you know, how--put in context, if you will, how out of control or how big this became during the pandemic, this sort of underworld of businesses and industries?

MS. VAN ZELLER: Yeah, you know, you start by hearing about the fake COVID tests and the fake vaccines. But what you don't realize is that there's also an explosion of drugs, because not only are there more people willing to cross the border with drugs, or to work in the labs to make the drugs--you know, people that don't have other opportunities at the moment to make money--there's also more--there was also more people consuming drugs.

And then again, I mean, I think the perfect example is really something like the romance scamming, which grew, I think it was 300 percent during the global pandemic. I mean, people losing millions of dollars from--being stolen from them from people that they thought was the love of their lives. But you can really apply that to almost anything and you realize that there was just a huge rise and explosion in these black markets.

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MS. HERNÁNDEZ: So, let's take a step back. So, people are obsessed--and I count myself amongst them—with, you know, true crime documentaries, right? I'm a former cops reporter myself in Florida, of all places. I imagine that you get a lot of people who are asking, you know, when they see your show, if what they're seeing is real. So how do you find these stories, and how do you build the show around those topics?

MS. VAN ZELLER: You know, Arelis, it would be so much easier to make the show if it wasn't real. You--I think the people that ask that are because they haven't spent the days and weeks and months with my team and I where we go to places--we traveled far and wide to places to wait and to knock on doors but then eventually to wait on people that have promised to show up and don't show up. You know, it's like months and months and months of trying to get access to these worlds and convincing people to talk to us. And it's incredibly difficult, and that's why it's--you know, it takes several months per episode. So, it's really hard.

But eventually I think, at the end of the day, one thing that I've seen through my career as a journalist is that if you show up, and you tell people, and you treat people as human beings, and you show up with empathy and no judgment, and you're really there with curiosity and you want to tell their story, that, at the end of the day, most people have a story to share, want to tell their stories. You know, these are people that do things that in many cases not even their families know they're doing. And a lot of the people, I say, the vast majority of the people that work in these underworlds, are doing so because of a lack of opportunity. I don't think anyone is born wanting to be a criminal.

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And so, we give them the chance to tell us their stories, and to tell us what exactly they do. And a lot of times, they're also very passionate about what they do. So, they want to brag, they want to tell people, you know, I'm the best at doing this. So, you can never sort of undervalue that bragging right. But I would say more than anything is this need that we all have as human beings to share our stories and to be understood.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: No, that's certainly true. And I still wonder how do you get some of these people to sit down and talk with you? I know the appeal the empathy and wanting to tell their stories. Are there other--some groups of people that are more willing to sit down and talk to you on camera than others?

MS. VAN ZELLER: Absolutely. I'd say, you know, a lot of doing domestic episodes, which we did a lot for season two, partly because of COVID and travel restrictions. But also, because I do think it's fascinating that we usually tend to think of black markets as happening overseas, and we don't realize that it's happening right here in our backyard.

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But part of--but it is actually in many ways a little bit more challenging to get access to groups here in the U.S., even though we filmed crazy things here in the U.S. during season two, including a car--a guy stealing a car 10 minutes from my house where we filmed the whole operation for the episode on stolen cars. But I would say that whenever we travel and report in countries where there's a higher level of impunity, such as Mexico, or even Colombia, that--you know, and I can give you a list of countries where we were for both season one and two, where that is the case--that it is easier, I would say, because they're less afraid of being caught by law enforcement. Here in the United States, it's definitely more challenging in many situations.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: How do you negotiate the ethics of that conversation? I mean, you know, I know that people come in sort of with sunglasses or with some kind of disguise or something. How do you sort of negotiate that with the person and still make that--you know, get enough content that it's an engaging conversation with this person?

MS. VAN ZELLER: We are actually very, very careful with making sure that the person is not identifiable. I think it is very much our responsibility as journalists, if we tell them that we're going to do everything we can to make sure that they're not--and quite frankly, we would not have a show if--because the vast majority of people don't want to be on camera while admitting to committing crimes. So, we take that responsibility very seriously.

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But again, I think it's very much about treating people--you know, these are the most ostracized and stereotyped people in our society. And we approached them, again, very much with empathy and with curiosity, and I want to hear their stories, and I treat them like human beings. And I think one of the biggest powers that we have as journalists is--and my main goal, I think, as a journalist throughout my career--has been to build bridges. I think it's very important to create outrage as well. But I think more importantly--and more important, even harder, is to actually build bridges. So, that is what I sort of tried to do with everyone, with every--in every interview. I do--of course, some are much easier than others. You know, sitting across the table from a neo-Nazi white supremacy [phonetic] who's telling me that he wants to incite violence and kill people is not easy. And it's, you know, almost impossible, if not impossible to feel any empathy in that situation. But it's, again, my role as a journalist to listen to that story and to share it with the world.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, let's talk about that. I mean, one thing that strikes me about your show is your composure, right? When you're talking to these, you know, ideologues but also potentially dangerous criminals, you're not phased at all. And in fact, you talk to them--kind of--your tone of voice sort of stays even. How do you prepare for this, and how are you sort of maintaining or are you fighting inside of yourself when you're talking to someone like a white supremacist who's, you know, actively saying things that are not true, that are that are explicitly hateful?

MS. VAN ZELLER: I think if you--when people watch that episode, they will see how differently I react. I think it's very visible how upset I was about some of the things that I was listening. And you can tell it in my face, and you can tell it in my reactions and the way that I approach that.

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I do think that in some situations, we have to be careful as journalists, because it's hard to understand what exactly is the actual truth versus what they're trying to tell us because they want to be on television and because they--you know, they want that shock value. And so, that is something that I--when I was interviewing the white supremacist, for example, when he was saying some horrendous things, I asked him, are you seriously--you seriously believe in this or are you just saying this because you want to shock people. I really have a hard time believing that this is--that this is what he believes, and this is what he wants.

And, you know, I think that's a characteristic that I have, is I do try to always find--place myself in people's shoes and try to find how this person got to be the person that they are. And of course, in the case of white supremacy it was, I think, the hardest, and quite frankly, the scariest of all episodes we did this season.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, I'm going to ask you a question from the audience. We have a question from Lobat Asadi in Texas. He said, "Did you face any specific life-threatening situations uncovering the dark world of illegal trafficking?"

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MS. VAN ZELLER: You know, I don't think any story is worth a life. So, there's many years of--you know, we've--I’ve been doing this for many years. There's a lot of training that goes. There's a lot of preparation. So, we make sure that we minimize the risk as much as possible.

However, of course, there are situations that are what I call the uncomfortable moments when we do this sort of reporting. You know, in season one, for example, there was a moment that we were filming with the Sinaloa Cartel for a story we were doing on gun trafficking. And we were deep in Sinaloa country, and suddenly, we're surrounded with these armed men with guns, and we hear a helicopter, and it's the marines and they believe the marines are coming. And there's this huge moment of tension where they freak out, and we're sort of stuck in the middle because either we flee with them, and then the marines can start targeting us thinking that we're part of the group, or we stay behind, which is also a very uncomfortable situation to be in because we'd be left all by ourselves in the middle of Sinaloa territory.

So, there are a few moments like that. And for "Trafficked" we very much keep filming as much as possible. We have an incredible camera team that is, you know, way steadier and sort of braver than I in many situations where they just keep rolling. But those are moments that I think are very important to describe what life is like in places like this.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, what motivates you in the face of all those dangers to keep telling these kinds of stories?

MS. VAN ZELLER: You know, I think that people don't realize, but these gray and black markets actually take up for almost half of the global economy. You know, the drug trade alone brings in between $400 and $600 billion a year. That's more than all of the GDP of all the countries except the top 20 richest. So, it's an enormous amount of money that has a huge impact in all our lives.

And I also think that our jobs as journalists, is to empower people with information. And the information of what happens in these black markets is incredibly challenging and difficult and sometimes dangerous to get. But it is nonetheless incredibly important.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, I’m wondering did your crew ever refuse to go with you because it was too dangerous or questioned, you know, the decision on whether to move forward with a specific story?

MS. VAN ZELLER: There have been situations, including we're filming--we're currently filming season three. There was a situation where we were interviewing a group, and one of the people in the group was being very aggressive towards us and made us all feel very uncomfortable. Specifically, the cameraman Fred Menou, who was--started being threatened by this person. And the next day, we were supposed to film with this group again, and we all had a team huddle. We talked and we didn't feel comfortable with it. So, we didn't go back. So, yes, there’s situations where someone might say--and you know, it's actually something that I value very much. So, after every shoot at the end of the day, whenever we can and we finish at a reasonable hour, I do like to have a moment, a dinner, a drink, something where we all as a team get together and we talk about what happened that day, because we do see some very difficult things. And to be able to talk about it as a group is sort of very therapeutical in a sense, and it also gives us a sense of how we're feeling about the story and what we're comfortable and not comfortable with doing.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: I hear you on, you know, wanting to give people information and to shed light on parts of our society and our businesses that frankly, you know, people wouldn't want to see or perhaps just don't know or have any access to. But do you worry sometimes that you might give these folks who essentially, you know, without being charged are criminals, a platform?

MS. VAN ZELLER: Absolutely. And you know, the white supremacy story is a very good example of that. I was--in 2008, in the first Obama election, I was in California, actually with my husband, who at the time was working with me as a producer/director. And we spent that night with some white supremacists here in California as they were watching the election. And it was at a moment where the press, the media was talking about this rise of white supremacy with the election, with the possible election, of our first Black president. And we spent the night with them and the next morning I--we woke up and we both decided that we didn't feel like it was a time to give a platform to a movement like that. We felt that we were living in hopeful times, and why give these people a platform so that they could spread their ideology? And we didn't.

But you fast forward several years to last year when we started actually reporting on white supremacy in October of 2019--so two months before--sorry, of 21, sorry--of October 2020, two months before or three months before the Capitol invasion. And we filmed with the Proud Boys. And it was something that, again, we discussed. It was--it was my idea. I wanted to do an episode on this, and I discussed it with my team, and then we discussed it in the National Geographic.

And of course, I mentioned--we mentioned the same thing: Are we giving people a platform? But at the same time, I think that it was important that we did so, so much so that three months later we saw what we saw. We saw an attack on our democracy with the invasion of the Capitol. So, I think it was more relevant than ever. And yeah, it's a constant debate that you have to have as a journalist, is how much do you become a platform for them versus how important it is to tell the story.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Understood. Well, you've had a long career covering conflict zones and reporting on black markets. What do you think attracts you to these types of stories personally and to the underworld or the underbelly of our societies?

MS. VAN ZELLER: It is not the adrenaline at all. I think most people think that she--you know, this crazy person wants to go to these places because she lives of or feeds off the danger. That is--could not be further off from the truth. I think what I really have been attracted to from the beginning--you know, one of the first stories I ever did was about the jihadi--Syrian jihadis crossing into Iraq to fight against the American--the Americans fighting in Iraq at the time. This was--I was in--I was in New York City during 9/11. I had just arrived at Columbia University. I had been there for a month, and I was the only Portuguese journalist in Manhattan at the time. So, I'd worked at a Portuguese television station--I'm Portuguese--and they called me and asked me if I could go report live on the events of 9/11. I was 24 years old, very inexperienced.

And that day and that week that I did reporting for them totally changed me. I realized at that moment that I--the sort of reporting I wanted to do was where I can contextualize, like, I can understand why these horrific events happen and I can contextualize them, and try to even meet some of the people that we consider our enemy. So, a year later, I moved to Syria to enroll in--to learn Arabic, and eventually started reporting from there and met these jihadis who were crossing the border into Iraq to fight against Americans.

And I think the most scariest--the scariest thing I found out in that reporting was that actually, these people that we consider our enemies are much more similar to us than we'd like to believe. You know, they're mothers, they’re fathers, they have kids, they have goals, they have dreams and aspirations. And, you know, turning our backs on them is not going to change anything, and really trying to understand where that grief comes from or where the--you know, in the case of drug--the drug business, for example, that has such an impact on our lives, where those lack of opportunities comes to--comes from, that make people turn to these black markets, I think for me was very much of a pull to that--sort of that unknown world to get answers.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: How has that background of doing all these kinds of--building all these sources, learning all these different languages, inform the topics that you choose for each season of the show? Like, how do you know what stories you're going to go after each season?

MS. VAN ZELLER: We have a long, long list of black markets all around the world, some that I'm so passionate about but National Geographic doesn't agree with me on. But the vast majority--you know, we have--I have a big team, an incredible team of producers and directors. And we have daily calls, and we talk about stories we're working on and future stories, and everybody has an input, and eventually we find stories that we believe are not only important, that are relevant for a U.S. audience and a global audience as well and stories that we think are actually feasible. Because there are a lot of stories out there that, although incredibly important, are just almost impossible to do. And believe me, we actually do go after a lot of almost impossible stories, but there are some that we know which just--we have 10 of these to produce in a year and some we know we can get access easier.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Any clue as to which topics National Geographic won’t let you go toward?

MS. VAN ZELLER: You know, actually an interesting one that is going to be the premiere episode of season two is about black-market plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery. And initially you don't realize that it is actually quite big and it is actually having a terrible negative effect. People are getting really badly injured, and some people are even dying from it.

But it's not as easy as pitching them on a story about meth or guns, which is so obviously a large black market with a lot of relevance. So, when we--when I first approached them with that idea, it wasn't an immediate yes, but I'm very persistent and I didn't give up and, and eventually we went after the story that was initially about these butt injections, these silicone underground, illegal sort of back-alley injections that are done all over the United States, to make women have larger butts, and they're incredibly dangerous, and women are dying. But through our reporting, we realized that there's actually an even larger story with these sort of low-cost clinics in strip malls in Florida that are preying upon minorities and that are also very dangerous and where people are also dying, and very little sort of oversight has been done.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, I want to talk about that more. But I'm just going to take--pivot very quickly to an audience question that came in from Joseph Oyer in Massachusetts. In the countries where trafficked goods originate, what roles do governments play there?

MS. VAN ZELLER: Again, it's interesting because we truly believe that the goods and the black markets exists in foreign lands. You know, you take something like the drug epidemic, and you realize right now--here in the United States, and you realize that the worst drug epidemic in American history was made right here. It's American made by American pharmaceutical companies that knew full well that what they were doing was, you know, fueling this horrific epidemic with thousands of people are still dying every day. And yet, nothing stopped them.

So, we can continue pointing fingers at other countries. But I think we won't--we need to start with ourselves. And actually, that's one of the reasons why so many of the stories we did for season two where--are here, happened here in the United States, because I do think it's important for us to realize what's happening in our own backyard.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Getting back to the cosmetic surgeries, the butt lifts and all that, there's--at one point in the show--again, not wanting to give anything away--but you draw comparisons between what motivates these women to get these very serious and complicated and dangerous surgeries to your own Botox injections. Can you--can you tell me a little bit about that narration and why you drew those comparisons?

MS. VAN ZELLER: Oh, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. You know, and that's, I think, why it was so important for me to be open about the fact that I get Botox injections on my forehead and to say that, look, it's not just them. We're all sort of victims of this. And I am myself--you know, I think a large part of it is social media. There's an enormous pressure. You talk to any teenager these days about the impact that social media has on their lives and the pressure that it has for them to look a certain way, especially, unfortunately, women and female teenagers, and it's horrific. There's--it's really, really, really scary. And that was something that I wanted to be very transparent about. But, you know, they feel this pressure. I feel it, too, and I think to some extent we all do.

But you know, fortunately, or--you know, I--if I were to do a larger plastic surgery, I could probably afford a certified plastic surgeon here in Los Angeles, where I live, or elsewhere. And in many of these cases, there are women who cannot afford these certified surgeries and so they have to resort to either back-alley silicone injections, incredibly dangerous ones, or to low-cost sort of strip mall clinics in Florida.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Trans women are a sizable portion of the women who are undergoing these types of surgeries. Why is that?

MS. VAN ZELLER: That is absolutely true. You know, I don't think our healthcare system treats trans women very well. There isn't a lot of--we don't pay for many of their surgeries, we--and we haven't for years. You know, recently I interviewed actually one of the pumpers for the podcast. We also have a "Trafficked" podcast. We interviewed a pumper who's a trans woman herself, and she was saying that when she went for what she called her sex change, she traveled all the way to Argentina because it was much cheaper there, and her description of the operation or the surgery was horrific. And again, she couldn't afford to go--come back and go to a plastic surgeon to get the body that she wanted and that she believed she sort of needed to have that would make her happy and make her feel complete. And so, she had to resort to initially getting injections herself. And eventually she became a pumper and is now doing time in prison because eventually one of her clients died.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: The majority of your subjects are Black and brown. What role does race and economic background play in all of this?

MS. VAN ZELLER: I think it has a great--a big role because it's about inequality, right? It's again--I think nothing more than that shows us that it's not because there's a bigger propensity of Black or brown to enter worlds of crime. Of course not. It is the lack of opportunities. It's the inequality that exists. Again, nobody is born wanting to be a part of a drug cartel, or you know, to go out and pump and inject people with deadly substances. You know, in so many of these cases, I'd say in the vast majority of the people that we talk to, it is the lack of opportunity.

I will never forget in season one when we, for example, filmed this kid who was traveling through the high Amazon mountains in Peru, and he was carrying these loads, heavy loads of cocaine on his back, him and his friends, incredibly dangerous journey, not only because of the elements--it gets cold and everything, they have to walk for days and days on end--but also dangerous because there are rival groups that come and attack him. He’s seen friends being killed in front of his eyes; so, horrific stories.

And when I sat down with them at night, before their long journey, I asked them so what is it? Why do you do this? Why--what when you were young, what were you dreaming of doing? And one of them said I wanted to be a dentist. My dream all my life was to become a dentist. And I said, why a dentist. He said, because I'd really love--I love to make people smile, big smiles. But unfortunately, my family can't afford for me to become a dentist. So, what I do here--he was 17 or 18 years old--is try to save some money in the only way that I can here, and the only job that is offered to me, in order to be able to perhaps one day get my dream, go to college and become a dentist. And I will never forget that.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. We're running quickly into the end of our time. But I wonder if there's a moment or an episode that just really stood out to you and what your takeaway was from season two.

MS. VAN ZELLER: I think the white supremacy one is a very--it's not something that you initially think as a black market. But realizing really early on when we started reporting on it, how these global networks truly operate like trafficking networks. You know, but instead of putting drugs in people's bodies or guns in people's hands, they're putting violent and dangerous ideas in people's heads.

And to see how these groups--you know, we interviewed victims--family members of victims of the El Paso shooting in 2019, and that was one of the hardest things, you know, hearing people who were targeted because they were Latinos. And one of the women that we interviewed was actually there and was able to protect and save a lot of people by getting them through the back door of the Walmart at El Paso while a gunman was shooting and targeting Latino people. It was--it was really painful and hard to see. And then, to realize that these attacks are actually linked or this attack was actually linked to what happened in New Zealand just a little bit before and is linked to what happened in Norway several years ago and how there's sort of a communication online and a distribution of these materials and violent materials online was really, really scary.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And unfortunately, we are out of time so we'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us, Mariana van Zeller. It was a fascinating conversation.

MS. VAN ZELLER: Thank you, Arelis. It was my pleasure.

MS. HERNÁNDEZ: And thank you for tuning in today. If you’d like to check out what interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com and register to find out more information about upcoming programs. I’m Arelis Hernández and thank you for watching.

[End recorded session.]

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