Diego A.

Diego focuses on stories from North and South America, from colonial history and pirates to cartels and the modern underworld. He is especially drawn to places where crime, power, and myth collide.

The most recent posts by

Diego

A.

Clipperton Island: The Atoll Where One Man Made Himself King

Tragedies & Disasters

Clipperton Island: The Atoll Where One Man Made Himself King

Clipperton is a remote coral atoll off Mexico where a forgotten Mexican garrison slowly died. The last man alive crowned himself king of the survivors.

Portrait of a male author wearing a cap and backpack, smiling with a city skyline at sunset in the background.

Colonia LeBaron: The Polygamist Mormon Colony in Mexico's Cartel Heartland

American polygamists fled south to build a colony in the Mexican desert. Its founder's own son turned it into a killing ground.

Diego A.

Tragedies & Disasters

Plaza de los Coches: The Largest Slave Auction Square in Spanish South America

Cartagena's Plaza de los Coches was one of Spain's busiest slave markets. The dark history behind the sweet stalls, the carimba brand, and the priest who resisted.

Deadwood, South Dakota: The Lawless Gold Town Where Wild Bill Died and the Wild West Became Legend

Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead here weeks after arriving, in a gold town that wasn't even legally allowed to exist. This is where the Wild West myth was born.

La Rinconada: The Highest City on Earth, Built on Gold and Mercury

La Rinconada is the highest city on Earth at 5,100 meters, where miners work 30 days unpaid for one day's gold and poison the glacier they drink from.

Skull and Bones: Yale's Most Powerful Secret Society and the Tomb It Runs From

Skull and Bones taps just fifteen Yale seniors a year — and that tiny annual harvest has produced U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and the founders of the CIA. It runs from a windowless New Haven crypt no outsider has ever been allowed inside.

Torre de David: The Unfinished Skyscraper That Became the World's Tallest Slum

Torre de David is a 45-story Caracas skyscraper, abandoned half-built, that thousands of squatters turned into the world's tallest slum before it was emptied.

Bohemian Grove: The Secret Redwood Camp of America’s Powerful Men

Every July, presidents and billionaires gather in a California redwood forest to burn an effigy before a giant owl. The atomic bomb was planned here.

Diego A.

Osage County, Oklahoma: The Oil Murders Behind Killers of the Flower Moon

Tragedies & Disasters

Osage County, Oklahoma: The Oil Murders Behind Killers of the Flower Moon

The Osage became the world's richest people in the 1920s — then began dying for their oil. Inside the true story behind Killers of the Flower Moon.

Kuhikugu: The Lost City of the Amazon and Percy Fawcett’s Obsession

Percy Fawcett died hunting a lost stone city in the Amazon. He was looking for the wrong thing — a real civilization was there, hidden in plain sight.

Diego A.