A Mexican appeals court has overturned a ban on screenings of “Presunto Culpable” (“Presumed Guilty”), the recently released documentary which depicts some of the most serious failings of Mexico’s criminal system. According to the AP, the court which heard the appeal said suspending viewing of the film violated freedom of information rights.
The decision, says the wire service, came just one day after the Cinepolis cinema chain finally agreed to stop screening the film in its Mexico theaters. The theater is expected to restart screenings of the movie shortly.
As discussed in recent days (Washington Post, New York Times), “Presunto Culpable” follows the story of 26-year-old José Antonio Zuniga – a young man wrongly convicted of a 2005 shooting murder, despite almost there being no real evidence against. The Post yesterday, on some of the fundamental problems of Mexico’s justice system which the documentary brings to light:
“In Mexico, criminal cases are not presented to juries but to a judge, who does not hear oral testimony but reads through reams of affidavits. More than 90 percent of defendants never actually see a judge, never see an arrest warrant and are convicted without any physical evidence.”
The film’s distribution was challenged by Victor Reyes Bravo, a relative of the individual Zuniga was charged with killing and one of the prosecution’s only witnesses in a case the New York Times describes as “manufactured.” Reyes Bravo appears in the film and says his privacy rights were violated in the process.
Zuniga was granted rare retrial, thanks to help of Roberto Hernandez, a Mexican lawyer and co-director of the film, and his wife and producer, Layda Negrete. His original sentence was first upheld and he was only exonerated after Hernandez’s filming of Zuniga’s retrial was shown to a higher court.
Before last week’s ruling, the Post said “Presunto Culpable” had become “the most popular documentary ever shown in Mexican theaters.” It’s received praise across the Mexican political spectrum. First lady Margarita Zavala called it “the best film” on Twitter last week. Mexico City mayor and presidential hopeful, Marcelo Ebrard of the PRD, had promised to show the film for free in the Zocalo. The last week’s media coverage has no doubt raised the film’s profile even higher, as The Guardian suggested yesterday.
Just ask a pirated DVD vendor on the streets of the Mexico City: “I can’t remember anything like this. Maybe Spider-Man 3 did as well, but I’m not even sure about that.”
To other stories:
· On violence in Mexico, the El Paso Times reported yesterday that Marisol Valles, the 21-year-old (former) Mexican police chief of the Juarez Valley town of Praxedis G. Guerrero was processed and released from an El Paso immigration detention center yesterday. An immigration judge is expected to hear her request for asylum at a future, but still undetermined, court date. On International Women’s Day yesterday, the CS Monitor with the latest on growing claims of “femicide” in Mexico. Marianne Mollmann of Human Rights Watch says the combination of “heightened illegal activity,” on the one hand, and the “shifting roles of working women in border cities like Juárez,” on the other, have created a “Molotov Cocktail of cultural phenomena that will lead to a lot of death, in particular a lot of death in women.” And the AP says legislators from the PRD, the PRI, and the PAN are all demanding that a joint US-Mexico working group be established to examine claims that the ATF intentionally allowed US guns to enter Mexico under its now much-criticized “Operation Fast and Furious.”
· On politics in Mexico, El Universal reports on new labor reform legislation being presented by the PRI in the coming days. And Gancho highlights this week’s announcement made by 2006 PRD presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, that he will travel to Washington in September. Ganocho says it will be AMLO’s first trip to the US. In 2006, I remember AMLO using the fact that he did not even possess a passport to bolster his nationalist credentials.
· Boz picks ups news of the first casualties to come from Colombia’s training of Mexican security forces: the death of at least one Mexican soldier and four Colombians when two air force helicopters crashed into each other during a training exercise in the Colombian department of Tolima.
· Also in Colombia, news that 22 of 23 kidnapped oil workers appear to have been freed with the aid of the Colombian military just one day after being kidnapped en-masse by FARC rebels near the Colombia-Venezuela border. According to Bloomberg, one of the kidnapped men escaped on his own and provided information about his capture to the military who then set up some sort of “dragnet” which seems to have freed all but one of the 23. The kidnapped men are all employed by a third-party contracting company, South American Exploration, hired by the Calgary-based oil company Talisman Energy Inc. (TLM), which received rights last year to “explore and produce oil in areas of the nation once considered too risky because of guerrilla presence.”
· And EFE reports on the murder of human rights lawyer Ricardo Alberto Sierra this week in Medellin. The 52-year-old attorney had represented victims of Colombia’s right-wing death squads. EFE: “At the time of his death, Sierra was acting on behalf of victims of the Elmer Cardenas and Pacific blocs of the now ostensibly demobilized AUC militia federation, blamed for more than 20,000 killings over the course of two decades.”
· In Guatemala, the BBC says first lady Sandra Torres has officially announced her presidential candidacy ahead of September elections. Her announcement came despite a constitutional ban prohibiting relatives of any sitting president from running to replace him/her. Therefore, the BBC suggests the final decision about the matter will lie with Guatemala's constitutional court. Torres has been in charge of poverty relief programs during her husband’s time in office. She apparently made her announcement in Mixco, a lower class suburb of the capital.
· Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez, in El Salvador’s Prensa Gráfica, highlights the key agenda items for President Obama’s visit to the Central American country later this month. Martinez says the issue of greatest importance will be poverty and social development. After that regional security in Central America, migration, climate change, and finally trade will be discussed.
· El Faro reports on the International Court of Justice’s partial ruling that both Nicaragua and Costa Rica not send troops to the area of dispute around the San Juan River. Interestingly, both Nicaragua and Costa Rica seem quite pleased about the preliminary decision. A final decision on the case, however, might not come for many years, says El Faro.
· Spain’s El País reports that Bolivian President Evo Morales has ordered an international arrest order against former National Police Colonel, Jorge Roger Sanchez Pantoja, for alleged drug trafficking.
· Human Rights Watch has a new statement on the detention of Venezuelan Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni. HRW thanks the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention for continuing to monitor the case and asks that the UN “press the government of Venezuela to drop all charges against [Afiuni].”
· BBC Mundo says a proposal to free some 10,000 “non-dangerous” prisoners in Chile in order to address issues of prison overcrowding will not include granting special release to prisoners over the age of 80. In other words, the around 70 individuals currently jailed for human rights crimes committed under the Pinochet dictatorship will remain in prison, if the proposal goes through – something the Chilean Left and rights groups have demanded.
· On Latin America-related international news and opinions: Mercopress reports on Chilean President Sebastian Pinera’s visit to both Israel and Palestine earlier this week. Chile became one of many Latin American states to recently recognize a Palestinian state, but, unlike Brazil and Argentina, Pinera continues to avoid questions about whether or not that recognition came with pre-1967 borders. Infolatam reports a date (March 28) has been set for the first bilateral meeting between Hugo Chavez and Dilma Rousseff. The meeting will continue a tradition begun between Chavez and Dilma’s predecessor, Lula da Silva, in which leaders from the two countries met every four months to discuss bilateral and regional issues.
· IANS reports on trilateral meetings this week between South Africa, Brazil, and India in New Delhi. In a statement Tuesday, the three countries called for comprehensive UN Security Council reform, including the expansion of permanent and non-permanent membership. The foreign ministers also issued a short statement on the Middle East, saying they were “closely attentive to the present political unrest in several Middle Eastern and northern African countries” and stressed the “expectation that the changes sweeping the region follow a peaceful course.” No specific comment about on-going talks in the US and elsewhere about military intervention in Libya, namely the possible establishment of a no-fly zone, although Brazil did say it would oppose such actions last weekend.
· And finally Kevin Gallagher, in The Guardian, says a Chinese or East Asian model of development has officially replaced the Washington Consensus in Latin America. “For 30 years, Washington has been shopping a trade-not-aid based economic diplomacy across Latin America and beyond,” Gallagher writes. At the moment, Colombia and Mexico remain the only “card carrying” members of that Consensus – although that could soon be changing. The rest of the region, Prof. Gallagher maintains, has opted for Chinese loans that have few “conditionalities” and have been better suited to fund major infrastructure projects across Latin America.
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