Andrés Orrego saved the man’s number in his cell phone under American Friend. Orrego, who runs a small supermarket in the heart of the northern Colombian town of Yarumal, had liked the foreign stranger’s manners. He made an effort to speak Spanish well, paid in cash with new bills, and was almost always on time. Plus, he bought on a large scale, as if for a crowd: 22 pounds of peanuts, 55 of oranges, 22 of eggplant, 220 of potatoes, 50 coconuts, 75 limes… And then, sure, odder things: a hard-to-find fish, organic wheat flour, pure honey from a specific bloom.

A week after meeting this mysterious man, an incredulous Orrego had to bring his face close to the television screen to believe what it was showing him: that his American friend was the main suspect arrested in an operation carried out against Lev Tahor, the ultra-radical Judaic sect whose leaders have been convicted of abuse and child marriage in the United States. The “Jewish Taliban,” as the group is known, had been looking to settle down in Antioquia, the Colombian department. In Orrego’s town. Next to his supermarket. Colombia, the seventh country through which the group had passed in the last decade, has run into the same difficulties as Mexico and Guatemala once did: it does not know what to do with the sect, nor how to stop it.

The American Friend — whose name has not been disclosed — was the head of a commune with eight other adults and 17 minors. They lived in a truck stop hotel on the outskirts of town. The little girls wore a tunic that covered them from head to foot, similar to a burqa that only revealed their face. Orrego is one of the few residents of Yarumal who got to know the adults, or at least the four who came to his store to shop for groceries. To the rest of the 45,000 inhabitants, they had gone unnoticed. Neither the neighboring merchants, local youth, nor street vendors had seen them in person before the images of the veiled girls and boys with payot were viewed around the world. Though, in reality, they were being watched by many.

Cristian David Céspedes, the mayor of this farming and cattle town, says that ever since they arrived on October 22 from New York, the seven Jewish families had been under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office. Their history had set off alarms. The sect makes children marry each other in order to have the best bloodline possible, to grow the community, the faithful. Though the mayor says they were merely passing through Yarumal, EL PAÍS had access to audiotapes in which two of the group’s leaders asked for help from a merchant to rent a property where they could set up a community.

But those plans fell apart. In a joint operation, authorities from Migration Colombia — the country’s national immigration agency — and the army raided the hotel on the night of November 23, as the group prayed. They had U.S., Guatemalan and Canadian passports, and five of the minors had been subjects of Interpol Yellow Notices, an alert that warns of the disappearance of people who are possible victims of trafficking and kidnapping.

On Monday this week, Colombia expelled nine members of Lev Tahor, who were “handed over to U.S. authorities” according to Gloria Arriero, director of Migration Colombia. The 17 children, who had been staying in a state-run child welfare center since their rescue in November, were placed on the same flight to New York, escorted by Colombian authorities. They were then handed over to child protection services in the United States.

Lev Tahor’s path to Yarumal had been a long one. The sect, with its extensive record of violations of children’s rights, is originally from Israel. Its members emigrated to the United States in the 1980s and continued their journey through Canada, Guatemala and Mexico. They later moved to Iran, where they sought asylum, before crossing the Atlantic again to Colombia. They are not nomads — they are fugitives.

In 2010, two of its leaders were convicted in New York for kidnapping minors, and forcing them to have sex. From then on, they have removed themselves from the rest of the world, and those who have followed their trail say that some members are currently in Turkey, Romania, Moldavia and North Macedonia. No one knows how they pay for their travel, housing, or the dozens of pounds of peanuts and eggplant. They have always accused their detractors of religious persecution. EL PAÍS reached out to two of their leaders, to no response.

An immortal sect

Despite the criminal trail the sect has left across the globe, the Colombian Attorney’s Office has not opened any investigation against them. “[The minors] entered through a normal immigration point, registered, and are with their parents. There are no signs that they were going to be made to have sex for money or enter into a forced marriage, nor did it seem like human trafficking,” say representatives from the Attorney General’s Office.

For 15 years, Orit Cohen has been warning authorities in Israel, Canada and Guatemala that the sect has little to do with Judaism and that it has “destroyed” her family and those of dozens of acquaintance. “It changed our life. There’s proof, there are charges and convictions, but no one has been able to stop them. It’s very painful for me,” she says in a video call from Rishon LeZion in Israel. “They’re a group of pedophiles. What more do they need to stop them?”

Cohen hasn’t been able to see her brother since 2010, when he joined Lev Tahor. Her brother fathered six children, who in turn had five more during the years they spent in Guatemala. Three of Cohen’s nieces and nephews have managed to leave, carrying emotional scars and testimonies of horror: forced marriages, sexual abuse, and psychological manipulation.

“I had a son there, and they don’t let me have any contact with him. When I escaped, I couldn’t save him,” says Israel Amir, one of Cohen’s nephews who spent nearly nine years under the sect’s control in Guatemala. “There was no possible opposition: if someone didn’t agree, they beat them, isolated them or shut them in a kind of cell where no one could speak to them,” Amir recalls. “If anyone tried to go or even think differently, they punished them until they broke.”

Cohen has become the most visible face in the fight against the elusive organization. It’s David and Goliath battle. Although she says she doesn’t trust authorities or those who claim to defend children’s rights in any country, she hopes Israeli courts will grant her custody of her nieces and nephews still under Lev Tahor’s control.

“It’s impossible to guarantee their safety with their parents, no matter what they say, no matter what they regret doing,” she says. “They are Jewish children and the State of Israel is waiting for them.”

Many minors come under control of authorities, but eventually wind up with their parents, as recently happened in Guatemala. In December 2024, the Central American country’s officials rescued 160 children from a settlement, where they found evidence of multiple acts of violence. A year later, only two of the minors remain in the custody of authorities. The others were returned to their parents or to their extended family by court order, despite warnings from Lucrecia Prera, head of the Children’s Ombudsman’s Office. “Many factors kept us from having a clear picture of what we were dealing with. We don’t know if minors died or if there were abortions or children were buried,” she says.

Prera was deeply impacted by the case of a woman in the community who, at 43 years of age, had 17 children. She also remembers the 29 kids with fake names, and the children with malnutrition who had been coached to not say a word, and a box of bones whose origins were never made clear.

“I’m very sorry to say it, but they always look for countries with weak legislation,” says Prera, who continues to wonder who pays for the group’s lawyers and its dozens of trips from one country to another. Those interviewed for this report share the same suspicion: that Lev Tahor is kept afloat by donations from fundamentalist groups.

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Exactly one year ago, in December 2024, Jacobo Reyes León and Jorge Alberts Ponce were feeling pleased with themselves. Business was booming. Reyes oversaw a major diesel-smuggling operation across Mexico’s southern border from Guatemala. Alberts managed contracts at the Cuajimalpa mayor’s office in Mexico City and controlled a series of land invasions in the metropolitan area. The two spoke frequently.

Alberts also ran several security companies and had a well-oiled system for acquiring weapons, licenses, and permits to carry them. Reyes often requested weapons or manpower from him, though sometimes it worked the other way around. They felt powerful. On one occasion, Reyes even said in a phone conversation that the one “who had the balls” now was him. If anyone was in charge, he meant, it was him.

Things only got better for both of them. Reyes and Alberts — who are now accused of organized crime as part of a network linked to the owner of Miss Universe, Raúl Rocha Cantú — managed to close several deals before the end of 2024. On December 17, Alberts told Reyes that the Cuajimalpa mayor’s office, then controlled by Carlos Orvañanos, had awarded him “fumigation” contracts. Alberts added that they were also going to give them “cleaning, security, and were looking into what construction projects they could get.” Reyes replied, “we practically own Cuajimalpa.” The month got even better when, four days later, Reyes managed to acquire a Segurimex security franchise, which would be added to the pair’s growing portfolio.

The branch of the network involving companies in this sector operated in parallel with the main — and perhaps even more profitable — scheme focused on fuel theft (known in Mexico as huachicol). In addition to Segurimex, owned by Reyes, Alberts controlled Servicios Terrestres de Seguridad Privada S.A. DE C.V. (SETER), Servicios Especializados de Investigación y Custodia S.A. de C.V., Servicios Integrales Valbon S.A. DE C.V., and Dinámica Seguridad Privada Consultores S.A. DE C.V. These brands operated as a single entity and concealed a weapons-trafficking operation. The corporate network was connected to other businesspeople in the sector and to a group of intermediaries who helped them obtain firearm permits and licenses. According to conversations collected in the investigation, to which EL PAÍS has had access, this group had the ability to open doors in various government agencies, primarily the Secretariat of Defense (SEDENA), which oversees all matters related to firearms in the country.

The machinations of these companies, orchestrated by Alberts, shed light on an otherwise opaque industry. For years, federal and state agencies contracted with companies in this sector, whose activities have been difficult to trace. One example is Cusaem, which during Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency (2012–2018) obtained contracts with various agencies totaling more than 1 billion pesos ($54.7 million) — a deal that has always been considered suspicious. In one case, Mexico’s now-defunct Federal Police hired its services to guard some of its facilities for three months, paying 801 million pesos ($43.9 million). In a report on that contract, the Superior Audit Office of the Federation concluded that the Federal Police “did not provide proof of the services rendered for which the 801 million pesos were paid.”

On the other hand, public officials with dubious track records — to put it mildly — have also used security companies to conduct business. For example, Hernán Bermúdez, alias Commander H — who was secretary of security in the state of Tabasco from 2018 to 2024 and is now imprisoned for leading a criminal organization, while working with the police — fits this pattern. Years before becoming secretary, Bermúdez, — who reached the post thanks to support of the current Morena party leader in the Senate, Adán Augusto López — created five security companies that secured multimillion-dollar contracts with public agencies, primarily with the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) delegation in that state.

The security companies involved in the Miss Universe case reveal the inner workings of the business — its dark, allegedly illegal side. In calls transcribed during the investigation, from late 2024 and early 2025, Reyes and Alberts frequently discuss guns that need to be picked up or sent elsewhere, men required for one company or another, a middleman who manufactures cartridges, and how much they charge to rent firearms and licenses. Sometimes, they also speak with third parties, part of their arms trafficking network, to discuss various aspects of the business. For example, in January, a man named “Omar” asks Reyes, “How much does a license cost with you guys?” Reyes replies that carrying a firearm is 11,000 pesos ($600) per month. Omar responds that it’s expensive, and Reyes, the businessman, says he can offer “380, we have submachine guns and handguns.”

Calls like this were common. On January 9, an unidentified man called Alberts and asked: “How much do six guns for a bodyguard cost?” Alberts replied: “The deposit is 23 pesos [$1.30] per gun, the paperwork is 9,000 pesos [$492] per gun, and the monthly fee is 9,500 pesos [$519].” The caller asked about the types of guns, and Alberts answered: “Glocks, Ceskas, Berettas, Tanfoglios, Mexica, and Mendozas.” Eight days later, another man called Alberts and said he “still needs to finalize the gun deal for Juárez.” Alberts replied: “That’s urgent,” and the other man confirmed, “he also needs to get that sorted out next week.”

The part of the chain that handles licenses and other dealings with authorities also appears in the group’s conversations. On January 21, an unidentified person “came out of a meeting with the Secretariat of Defense to resolve some issue with gun licenses.” This person told Alberts by phone that yes, they would help. Alberts asked him to inform them that by 3:00 p.m. there would be cash because he would meet with the lawyers, and that by 4:00 p.m. he would send it with Basurto, his bodyguard. The person agreed and added: “We need to be ready because then you have to pay the fine and their share,” referring to a possible bribe. Alberts asked how much longer it would take to resolve the issue. The other person replied eight to 15 days, so that the operation is done “properly.” Alberts concluded: “Yes, since they’re giving us weapons again.”

One of the key figures in this part of the scheme is “Captain Julián Cortés,” sometimes called just Capi, or Capi Julián. One day in January, for example, Reyes and Alberts were discussing a shipment of weapons coming from Tijuana. Alberts said: “Sixteen weapons are arriving tonight.” Reyes didn’t comment directly on that but replied that “Captain Julián will give him two [weapons], if he gets a CUIP from Valvon or Seter.” By CUIP, Reyes was referring to the Clave Única de Identificación Permanente (Unique Permanent Identification Number), a number assigned by the National Registry of Public Security Personnel. Valvon and Seter are companies involved in the scheme. When Alberts asked who the weapons were for, Reyes responded: “They’re for his buddy who owns the clothing store in Pachuca.”

Earlier, in December, Alberts and Reyes discussed that a businessman in the sector — mentioned dozens of times in the investigation but not yet charged — and Captain Julián “are the ones who sell the weapons.” In another December call, Capi instructed Alberts on how to open more doors at the Secretariat of Defense: “Normally, in December, SEDENA receives gifts from all the clients, and they take advantage of that to build networks.” Everything is said with complete calm, following the logic Reyes himself expressed: he’s the one in charge now. Sometimes the amount of information they readily share over the phone is astonishing.

Although the situation always seems under control, at times they show some fear that something might get out of hand, or worry about the consequences of a weapons or license sale. On January 6, 2024, Reyes called Alberts and asked if he knows “that the Pakistani guy is bringing only weapons from the Gulf Cartel.” The other doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Reyes grew exasperated: “You set it up! […] They’re the ones working with the Cape,” and told him to search online for “CAPE 25 CARTEL DEL GOLFO” — the alleged code name for the leader of the cartel.

The problem, apparently, was that a collaborator, nicknamed El Loco, who makes R-15 rifle cartridges, was worried about a possible seizure targeting this group. “They all got busted over there, man,” Reyes told Alberts, referring to the seizures in Tamaulipas. Reyes continued: “And your damn licenses went through.” “But from Seter or Seiza?” asked Alberts, questioning whether the weapons came from one of their companies or another. Reyes confirmed that they were from Seter.

There was also troubling information about El Loco. Reyes and one of his subordinates, Daniel Roldán, primarily involved in the fuel-smuggling operation, discussed him in a December conversation. Reyes told Roldán that “El Loco has that thing for making magazines.” He added that he “even makes weapons” and “already has four factories.” Roldán then asked Reyes if he should “give the go-ahead to produce the bullets and magazines, to talk to the SEDENA guy tomorrow.” Reyes replied yes, adding “he has the machines, and mentions that he’s been making about 1,000–1,500 R-15 magazines per week.”

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When ChatGPT is asked to define racism, it answers, “it is not just an attitude, but a power and exclusion structure across the social, economic, cultural and political.” AfroféminasGPT, on the other hand, defines it as “a power structure that builds a hierarchy of human beings based on supposed racial differences, to legitimize domination, exclusion and dehumanization. It operates in language, images, bodies, laws, economics, aesthetics, and memory. And it is maintained through silence, ignorance, denial and the symbolic reproduction of stereotypes.” To arrive at this answer, AfroféminasGPT resorts to thinkers such as bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Stuart Hall. Released at the end of October, it is the brainchild of Antoinette Torres Soler.

In 2022, the US company OpenAI presented the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT), an artificial intelligence model designed to understand and also generate natural text, one capable of conversing, writing, translating and reasoning, all while adapting to the style or purpose required. Since then, its most popular version, ChatGPT, has been in the spotlight for reproducing racial bias. Research published in scientific journals such as Nature and The Lancet has warned that these systems make biased judgments regarding groups such as African-Americans.

“No one explains how useful this can be for activism,” says Torres, who set out to build an anti-racist, ethical and decolonial AI model in May. Her initiative is the result of more than a decade of work against racism and discrimination against women of color.

Racism, a shared experience

Almost 20 years ago, when Torres left Cuba and settled in Spain, she faced the challenging reality of being a female immigrant of African descent. Her experience prompted her to look for others subjected to similar discrimination, providing her with a mirror that would reflect her own story. Then what she calls “the miracle” happened and women’s experiences across the globe came together. “You realize that the life experience of a Black woman in Spain is similar to that of a Black woman in Argentina, in Colombia, in Germany. What you think is a personal opinion is, in reality, a structural problem,” she explains.

And so in 2013, she came up with Afroféminas, an Afrofeminist platform that promotes equality, representation and racial justice. Its purpose was to make the multiple ways of living and expressing Blackness visible, and also to educate on the different manifestations of racism. It is a cause that combines study, reflection and the dissemination of voices from the global north and south – currents that are intertwined in Torres’ activism, as well as in her studies in philosophy, the arts, mathematics and the exact sciences.

Torres lives in Zaragoza, a Spanish city that is becoming known as the epicenter of technological innovation in Europe, with more than 20 data centers and nearly €50 billion in investment. It is no coincidence that what is now AfroféminasGPT has been incubated there.

Training opportunities are coming thick and fast to the northeast of Spain and, last May, Torres was able to take a crash course in AI that transformed her outlook. “The moment they explained GPT to me, I realized it was very applicable,” she says. At 50, Torres describes generative AI as fertile ground for social movements. “Regardless of the contradictions that there may be in AI – and I am aware of them – there is room to create, even to preserve knowledge.”

A repository of Black thought

Technically, whoever designs a GPT chooses how to train it, and with what resources as well as the tone in which it will express itself. “You decide the texts at its disposal, the authors you want to cite,” explains Torres. It is also possible to choose whether or not the model connects to the internet, which influences its independence. The GPT of Afroféminas does not do so, “precisely because the networks are plagued by racism, machismo and multiple biases,” Torres points out.

After learning how the system works, Torres focused on curating a version trained exclusively from texts by authors of Black and decolonial thought such as bell hooks, Angela Davis, Frantz Fanon, Stuart Hall and Octavia E. Butler. Unlike others, the model is based on ethical principles. It is configured from royalty-free content – fragments of PDF texts that anyone can find on the internet and which are often shared between activists. “It’s not a book that I bought, photocopied and fed in. I understand that there are many things that are still unknown about AI; we do not know exactly where it is going to take us, but what I am clear about is that all the steps I am taking are as ethical as possible. That’s the right way to go, as I see it,” she says.

The result is a space where icons of the global north coexist on an equal footing with thinkers from the south. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), Victoria Santa Cruz (Peru) and Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso (Dominican Republic) share the same space. It is a pedagogical and political proposal based on Black knowledge. Torres points out that “we have always complained about cultural appropriation and how Afro-descendant knowledge ends up being diluted or whitened. AfroféminasGPT preserves those voices and their contributions, without interpretations,” she says.

Representation and Afrofuturism

During its first weeks online, AfroféminasGPT has received more than 800 queries, which reflects the interest that it is generating. Its creator considers it a success, especially as it is an initiative of an independent collective working without public or private support, and which is sustained by small donations.

Working with GPT is not Torres’ endgame. She believes that these tools make Afrofuturism possible, opening the door to imagining better worlds. In recent months, Torres has produced a couple of experimental short films using AI. The first, The Wastebasket, explores the “white masks” referred to by psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon: the need for many Black women to adapt to the dominant canon in order to survive; “those masks that we put on to be accepted,” Torres explains.

For Torres, AI is not a substitute for creative work, but an opportunity to dispute representation as it stands. Her position on the debate around AI in art is clear. “I create figures of Black women, contexts where there are Afro-descendant people in positions of value. No one has done it before. No one has taken the trouble to say how we want to be seen. No one can tell me that I am detracting from something that hasn’t been done before,” she explains.

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