05 Apr 11 | Americas, Mexico
The 1962 film Santoy las Mujeres Vampiro (Santo and the Vampire Women) was due to be screened for the first time last week at Mexico’s Guadalajara Film Festiva. Unfortunately, one wrestler’s relatives intervened and got the film pulled from the festival. Morality was cited as the reason for its removal. El Santo was an iconic wrestler known for wearing a silver cloth mask with his leotard and cape. He never showed his face in public. According to his son, who is now also a silver masked wrestler known as El Hijo del Santo (the Son of El Santo), his father never agreed to have the movie shown in Mexico because the vampire women appear topless. He said that it violated all forms of decorum.
The film was a classic “B” movie, which was made in Mexico for foreign audiences. The story is about a professor who recruits a professional wrestler to protect his daughter from vampires who want to kidnap her and marry her off to the devil. The movie was directed by Alfonso Corona Blake , who directed 27 Mexican films in the 1950s and 1960s.
El Santo performed from 1942, when he adopted his stage name, until 1984. He was one of the most famous wrestlers in Latin America. Mexican wrestling, called Lucha Libre, is acrobatic and more dramatic than the sport practised in the United States. Traditionally a lower middle class sport, wrestling has begun to attract more sophisticated fans in recent years. The most famous wrestler today is Mistico, a short nimble wrestler who also wears a mask and can do acrobatic turns like a circus performer. He is now scheduled to begin wrestling in the United States under the World Wrestling Entertainment brand.
29 Mar 11 | Index Index, minipost
Reporter Noel Lopez Olguin has gone missing in Veracruz state. The Head of the Veracruz State Commission for the Defence of Journalists claims that no one has heard from him since 8 May. He travelled to the town of Soteapan in response to a telephone call. His car was found on the road to Soteapan, but his whereabouts remain unknown. Veracruz is often used as a transit point for drug cartels trafficking drugs to the USA. Paramilitary group Los Zetas is very active in the region, and kidnappings occur frequently.
11 Mar 11 | Americas, Mexico
The scandal caused by the banning of the documentary Presunto Culpable Presumed Guilty has given a shot of life to Mexicans. On Wednesday, after a legal battle of several days, the film was again allowed to be shown to the public.
The Sixth Collegiate Tribunal for Administrative Matters dictated that to stop showing the film caused “serious offence to society” and went against the public order. The legal demand was also used by the film producers to suggest to Mexico City that it open tribunals to cameras. The challenge was taken up by media conscious Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who said his government is studying ways in which cameras can be installed in Mexico City tribunals.
Mexico City is in the process of modifying its judicial system, introducing oral trials. Future criminal procedures will be conducted in oral trials without a jury, but open to the public. This change will make prosecutors,
defense attorneys, and judges more accountable and the system more transparent. Currently the trials are supposed to be public, but the real trial is actually conducted — in advance of the formal judicial proceedings — by the prosecutor.
Edgar San Juan, producer and writer of the Presumed Guilty, said the only thing that was gained with the censoring of the film was a shot of money to pirates, who made and sold thousands of copies of the film on the streets of Mexican cities.
The film focuses on the trial of an innocent man who is framed by police and investigators and charged with a murder he did not commit. While the film depicts the system in Mexico City, it has touched a chord among Mexican audiences because it proved something that every citizen in Mexico suspects of its judicial system. This was the first time that filmmakers were allowed inside a tribunal. The film was banned because the main witness potrayed in the film said it had violated his privacy.
04 Mar 11 | Americas, Mexico
A Mexican judge has ordered a temporary ban of Presunto Culpable, Presumed Guilty, an independent documentary that depicts the faults in public justice procurement in Mexico. The film (view trailer here)had been released to considerable acclaim and was one of the most viewed films last week in Mexico. The story line focuses on an innocent man arrested by Mexican police for a murder he did not commit, and shows how the system is set up to beef up fake cases against innocent people.
The reasons for the temporary ban is that Victor Daniel Reyes Bravo, one of the persons included in scenes in the documentary, said he never gave his permission to the filmmakers. The documentary producers say that according to Mexican law, court hearings are public.
The ban was ordered by a federal judge because Victor Daniel Reyes Bravo said the documentary “has caused him great moral damage”. Reyes Bravo is the witness who apparently encouraged by corrupt policemen, testifies in the trial that Jose Antonio Zuñiga killed a man.
Immediately after the announcement of the provisional ban, users of Twitter and Facebook exploded in a barrage of criticism, with others showing websites where viewers could download the picture in Freakshare.com.
The film won first place for documentaries at the London East End Festival
http://www.presuntoculpable.org/
