Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2011, when the film had just opened in Mexican cinemas and a judge had ordered its screening suspended. The article does not cover the outcome of that dispute.
It’s no secret that Mexico’s judicial system has a few gaps, and it’s hardly news that the police have a high rate of corruption. Mexico has just premiered a hard-hitting documentary on the big screen, “Presumed Guilty” (Presunto culpable), in which several journalists film the entire appeal in the court case of an innocent young man.
The documentary shows that in Mexico you don’t need a reason to end up in prison, and in fact anyone can end up there. All it takes is for a few police officers to grab you and say “it was you”. From the moment you enter prison, you’re already guilty, because in Mexico the “presumption of innocence” doesn’t exist, or at least not in practice.
Well, even though the film shows how justice works, recorded in real time, a judge is opposed to its release and wants to censor it, which has triggered the “Streisand effect”. Had there been no talk of censorship, the film would have generated great anticipation in Mexico, but in the rest of the world it would have been just another film. The attempt to censor it has drawn international attention to the situation in Mexico, because when someone wants to censor something, it’s because it’s going to tell the truth about something.
Some Spanish websites have already written about the censored film and made it available to internet users, which I don’t think is ethical for now, since it hasn’t actually been censored yet and the film deserves the box-office income it is due: those journalists literally risked their lives to expose the state of the judicial system.
The underlying message is clear: in this digital age, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a judge or the government itself. The harder you try to cover up the truth, the more forcefully it will spread. One way or another, the easy way or the hard way, the truth crosses the ocean in a matter of minutes.
So if you want to see this documentary, in which you’ll watch corrupt police officers, a “schoolyard” trial, an innocent man facing 20 years in prison and an appalling judicial system, don’t miss it.
And as a personal dedication to the judge who wants to censor the truth about a corrupt system, I only wish that in time she will have to spend part of her money on medicine to make up for her lack of conscience.
Featured image: ProtoplasmaKid, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
