New York Times - September, 05 2002

Imagine a rural area where there is no electricity, no running water and no real schools for the children. Where local strongmen and a corrupt government plunder natural resources and conspire to keep the peasantry suppressed. That’s not a description of some faraway continent. It’s how certain parts of Mexico are portrayed in “Cause for Murder,” a compelling documentary to be broadcast tonight as the latest program in the PBS series “Wide Angle.”

The documentary’s director and producer is Pamela Yates, who has won international acclaim for her work on Latin American and criminal justice issues. In this film she collaborated with The New York Times and its Mexico City bureau chief, Ginger Thompson. What resulted is a tight, 45-minute story about two young women who were killed for standing up against corruption in Mexico. But it is more than a tale of these two women; it is an examination of how difficult it is to bring change to a political and economic culture that has been in place for decades.

Digna Ochoa and María de los Ángeles Tamés, known as Marigeli, were lawyers with seemingly little in common. Ms. Ochoa grew up poor in the town of Misantla, near the Gulf of Mexico, one of 13 children of a sugar refinery worker. She learned about social injustice at an early age, when her father was falsely accused of murder. Ms. Tamés was born into a middle-class family in the Mexico City suburb of Atizapán and destined for an international life that few Mexicans can aspire to. Both eventually became lawyers and fought the system around them.

That system had been cemented in place by 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or the PRI. A combination of corruption, patronage and backing by the armed forces allowed it to rule the country in a manner that did little to improve the lives of the poor. The resentment that built up came to the fore in the 1990’s as the opposition National Action Party, or PAN, found its political voice. In 2000, its candidate, Vicente Fox, was elected president, riding a wave called “el Cambio” ("the Change").

But change at the top does not trickle down easily. In the 1990’s Ms. Ochoa, was trying to bring attention to the plight of the peasants by taking on human rights cases and by raising money for charitable projects in the countryside. In the meantime, Ms. Tamés was getting involved in politics and became a city councilwoman as a member of the PAN. Disappointed by what she saw as the corruption in her own party locally, she dug into kickbacks and other improprieties that led all the way to the town’s mayor.

The film cuts back and forth effectively between the lives of Ms. Ochoa and Ms. Tamés (though I would have liked to see what sort of relationship, if any, the two women had). Their parallel lives are striking, as is the sense of doom that both had because of death threats and the status quo they opposed. Ms. Tamés told her mother that if she didn’t come home one day, she should search for her in the river. On the evening of Sept. 5, 2001, she did return home, but was gunned down at her front gate. A little more than a month later, on Oct. 19, Ms. Ochoa was found shot dead in her office.

The film consists of interviews with family members, friends and officials, interspersed with scenes of the women at work and of Mexican life. President Fox makes multiple appearances and answers questions about politics and government accountability.

The investigation into the murders is the focus of the last third of the film. The bungling (or worse) by the prosecutor in the Ochoa case – who suggests she might have killed herself to achieve political martyrdom – shows that even in death, Ms. Ochoa wasn’t going to get justice immediately.

When asked about corruption, Mr. Fox says: “Things have changed completely in Mexico. Today we have an honest government, an accountable government, that is committed to changing things in Mexico. And our commitment is total in the case of the human rights.” But his antagonistic responses to questions about the Tamés murder and its possible connection to his own party leaves the viewer unsure of the true situation.

At the end of the film, the host of “Wide Angle,” Daljit Dhaliwal, interviews Enrique Krauze, a leading Mexican writer and historian.

One of the film’s best questions is asked by one of its last images – graffiti on a wall. “Éste es el cambio?” it asks. “This is the change?”