Cause for Murder is a collaboration which pairs New York Times bureau chief Ginger Thompson with independent filmmakers Pamela Yates and Peter Kinoy. The show paints a rich and complex portrait of modern Mexico with characters from the top to bottom of Mexican society: President Fox, family members, investigators, State Prosecutors, co-workers, reporters, and peasants.

“Within the past year in Mexico two young women lawyers were gunned down. Both women, from opposite ends of Mexican society, were working to end corruption and bring about rule of law.

Digna Ochoa was a lawyer from a peasant background who became recognized in her own country and internationally as a fearless defender of human rights. She took on difficult and controversial cases and was discovered shot to death in her office.

Marigeli TamesTames was the talented daughter of an affluent Mexican middle-class family. At 27 she was already a City Councilwoman and was becoming a political player in Fox’s PAN Party. She was shot through the heart on the eve of exposing citywide corruption within Fox’s own political party. How these two women lived and died, and how the Fox administration is pursuing justice in their cases reveals much about the possibilities of change in Mexico.

In 2000 Vicente Fox was elected President of Mexico, ending 71 years of single party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Fox was swept into office promising to bring “el cambio,” the change, to Mexico.

This change would attack corruption and injustice at every level of Mexican society. It was this very injustice that shaped the lives and deaths of Digna Ochoa and Marigeli TamesTames.

Marigeli’s fierce drive and commitment to the anti-corruption ideals of her PAN party led her to become City Councilwoman of Atizapan, a huge suburb of Mexico City. But to her shock and dismay she uncovered a citywide web of corruption controlled by the Mayor of Atizapan, a member of her own PAN Party. Before she could bring legal proceeding against the PAN mayor she was assassinated.

Digna Ochoa was a small woman who was pit-bull like in her defense of the poor and powerless. In what would become one of her final case she was defending two peasants who were fighting to keep illegal loggers out of their mountains. The story reveals impoverished farmers caught between the powerful forces of local strongmen, a US based International Corporation, and the Mexican Army. Digna brought the case to national attention and exposed human rights abuses by the Mexican Army. In October 2001, after numerous threats, she was found shot to death in her small law office.

Marigeli’s death was vigorously prosecuted by the Attorney General. He has brought indictments for murder against the PAN Mayor and the Mayor’s Personal Secretary. The alleged hired gunmen are still at large, believed hiding in Arizona.

Digna’s death is another matter. President Fox declared that “There will be justice in the case of Digna Ochoa,” but the investigation is mired in controversy. The Assistant Attorney General came to the conclusion that Digna staged her own death to look like a political assassination. Was this the same old corruption that Fox had vowed to eliminate? There was public outcry that possible involvement by the Army in Digna’s death was never properly investigated. Outraged, Digna’s family called for the Assistant Attorney General’s resignation, and he was forced off the case.

Cause for Murder uses the lives and deaths of these two courageous women to help the audience evaluate the reality of “el cambio”, Fox’s promise of a new tomorrow for Mexico.