After successfully bringing attention to judicial impunity, “Presunto culpable” is now victim of the Mexican judicial system

Antonio “Toño” Zúñiga, in a Mexican prison after being wrongfully accused of murder. (Credit: Abogados con Cámara (Lawyers with Cameras))

On July 12 the site Ciudadanos en Red published a letter attributed to Roberto Hernández, director of Mexico’s highest grossing documentary, “Presunto culpable”. The film about corruption in the Mexican judicial system remains at the crossroads of Mexico’s judicial system. But while in the film Antonio Zúñiga, falsely accused of murder, is the center of attention, now it is the film itself. As the letter states:

Yesterday [July 10] several media outlets requested access to the hearings: they left them outside of the court, including print media that only had a notebook. Then, what do we have? A court that works in secret, far from citizen scrutiny. A court that records what is convenient, not what really happens in the hearings. A court that passes judgement about our rights even before delivering a sentence. A court that time and again does not allow us to question the people who are suing us, as it again happened yesterday. A court that allows us to be sued by the witness who did not see Toño Zúñiga commit the crime of which he accused him and who yesterday also recognized that he has not seen the film for which he is suing us. In Mexico we are far from a dependable justice system and we are scared, not for what could happen to us, but what could happen to those who want to follow our steps and engage in journalism about Mexico’s Judicial Power.

“Presunto culpable” premiered at the Amsterdam International Film Festival on November 2008. With the support of Latino Public Broadcasting, it aired on PBS’s POV on July 2010. This showing earned POV an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, but by then the film had already received awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival, the East End Film Festival of London, the Guadalajara International Film Festival, DocumentaMadrid, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival and the Morelia International Film Festival. PBS’ press release presented it as follows:

In groundbreaking documentary, two young lawyers reveal a system where the burden of proof is turned on its head and 95% of Mexico City trials end in guilty verdicts.

It premiered in Mexico February 18, 2011, and in early March it was ordered off the screens. The justification was a lawsuit presented by Víctor Daniel Reyes Bravo, a prominent character in the documentary, who claimed that he had not granted permission to be filmed for the documentary. He was the only alleged witness of his cousin’s murder, and Toño Zúñiga’s twenty year conviction hinged on his testimony. The film, which would become Mexico’s most successful documentary, had already grossed around 1.5 million dollars at the time of the injunction. Layda Negrete and Roberto Hernández, the film’s producers, accused the government of manipulating Reyes Bravo to censor the film. Within a week copies of the movie had gone viral in YouTube, prompting Hernández to request for them to be removed. He thanked the solidarity of people who distributed his film, but claimed that he wanted to solve the question of censorship in the courts. By March 9 the injunction was lifted, and the film went on to break audience records.

Now, almost five years after its successful premier, “Presunto culpable” is facing nineteen lawsuits for “moral damage” (daño moral), claiming a total of almost 150 million dollars. The lawsuits have again prevented the film’s distribution in movie theaters and DVD. Today the film’s producers are asking, at the very least, for transparency in the process and to have the possibility of filming the court proceedings, a right now limited to the Judicial Power. As Layda Negrete told Milenio, whatever happens to “Presunto culpable” affects all Mexicans who expect a transparent legal process, free expression and serious political journalism.

Despite the gag, the internet still makes the movie available, now the proceedings must also remain open.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/59973655[/vimeo]