Semanario Zeta, a Tijuana-based investigative weekly, recently published a story about the Spanish version of The Red Note podcast, entitled La Nota Roja.
The article notes that La Nota Roja originated as a film project developed by producer Estefanía Bonilla Hernández and writer-director Craig Whitney inspired by the history of femicide in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. After entering into dialogue with U.S. production company Imperative Entertainment, the project grew to include two true crime podcasts. Narrated by journalist Lydia Cacho, the podcasts incorporate the voices of victims’ families, gathered through interviews conducted by Juárez-based journalist Alicia Fernández.
The podcast’s final episode was released ahead of November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The series consists of ten episodes, each running between 35 and 40 minutes, and is available in both English and Spanish on platforms including Spotify and Google Podcasts.
Whitney told Semanario Zeta that the title La Nota Roja was chosen deliberately to reflect the scale of the problem, explaining that femicide in Juárez is “a phenomenon much larger than just one city or its femicide statistics.”
Bonilla Hernández elaborated on what distinguishes the podcast from prior coverage of the subject. “This is not the first time the topic has been addressed in audiovisual media. There are extraordinary documentaries and an endless amount of literature, but they address cases in an isolated way, without connecting them to the broader context,” she told the publication. “For us it was very important to begin connecting each of the dots, so that it is understood that the murders and disappearances of women in Juárez are not a random occurrence.”
The series spans the full chronological arc of the crisis, from the killings of the 1990s, recounted through the testimonies of family members and former officials involved in those cases, to more recent events, including the January 2020 murder of activist and visual artist Isabel Cabanillas.