I WILL BE MURDERED B
Spain Great
Britain (85 mi) 2013 d: Justin Webster Official site Trailer
A fascinating story pulled from the headlines, where in May
2009, Guatemalan lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano was shot and killed near his
home. What followed was the publication
of a YouTube video where Rosenberg stares straight into the camera and states “Sadly,
ladies and gentlemen, if you are watching this video, it’s because I’ve been
murdered by President Álavaro Colom.” Asesinato Rodrigo
Rosenberg 1 (English Subs) YouTube (8:50).
“Guatemalans, now is the time,” he says from the grave, spurring massive
demonstrations and protests calling for the resignation of the president. As the nation was already mired in violence
and corruption, this explanation seemed all too plausible, creating a public
outcry and a yearlong investigation into the allegations, headed by Carlos
Castresana, the Spanish prosecutor who was appointed head of the investigation
into Rosenberg’s death. Castresana was
chosen due to his anti-corruption credentials, as he was the head of the
International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CIGIC), an organization
launched by the United Nations to combat corruption in Guatemala. He, perhaps, offers the most concisive
explanation in the film, but he is joined by others, including friends,
Rosenberg’s son, and other family members. While the talking heads approach grows overly
repetitive, where the sound of voices literally drone on and on, and
stylistically the film is not unique and can actually be rather bland, but the eventual
impact of the film’s exposé couldn’t be more intriguing, as the film unravels slowly,
offering little pieces at a time, building a case scenario that includes all
the possible suspects, where shootings, kidnappings, and murders were all too
common, remnants from the lengthy Guatemalan Civil War that ran from 1960 to
1996.
Perhaps what stands out the most was Rosenberg’s angry
indignation at the lawlessness and despair that prevailed in Guatemalan
society, where killers and common criminals were allowed to operate with
impunity, where an estimated 98% of the murders were never solved, so he felt
an obligation to do something about it. In
2007, a joint study by the World Bank and the United Nations ranked Guatemala
as the third most murderous country in the world, nearly four times higher than
Mexico, even outnumbering the number of civilians killed in the Iraq war. Harvard educated, Rosenberg was born into
privilege, living in an upscale community in Guatemala City reserved for
diplomats and the heirs to 19th-century fortunes, but he was estranged from his
family where his children were living with his divorced ex-wife in Mexico. Rosenberg’s claims on the infamous tape blame
the President, where an event triggered Rosenberg’s action to record his tape,
as a few weeks earlier, a pair of assassins on a motorcycle gunned down one of
Rosenberg’s clients in broad daylight, killing 74-year-old industrialist Khalil
Musa and his daughter Marjorie, who was driving her father home from his
office. Both were killed instantly,
generating few headlines, but the experience was especially shattering to Rosenberg,
as he was having an affair with Marjorie, though she was married at the
time. E-mails and text messages between
them were uncovered by the UN investigation, but Rosenberg feared investigating
the case on his own would lead to his death, becoming obsessed with solving
their murders, linking them to what he believed was a corruption scam reaching
to the highest level of government, to the office of President Colom and his
wife Sandra, who often appeared on TV handing out food to the poor, where Rosenberg
believed millions were being skimmed off the top by corrupt officials.
According to Castresana at his press conference, “Rosenberg
felt guilty about the assassination of [Marjorie] Musa, and he began a
desperate search all over to find Musa’s killers…but he found no proof.” The film lets his friends and family do much
of the talking, expressing their outrage, while also providing the testimony of
a series of witnesses who were contacted by Rosenberg in secret meetings, each
of whom played only a small part, unaware of how the others were
connected. They all felt they were
helping a man utterly devastated by his own personal grief, and Castresana was
as astonished as anyone, but after an elaborate investigation of surveillance
footage and wiretaps, Rosenberg was killed by assassins while he was out riding
his bike, where more security cameras exist in that neighborhood than any other
due to the rich residents, so cameras quickly led to the capture of the
assassins, where the event was recorded from several angles, jailing the men
seen tailing Rosenberg in a car. After
months in jail, they began to talk, helping Castresana unravel the mysteries of
his investigation. The film plays out
like an elaborate police procedural with all the missing pieces of the puzzle pieced
together, where the conclusions are as confounding as the allegations, as it
appears Rosenberg fabricated evidence to carry out his own murder, then tried
to pin the blame on the President. While
the investigation did lead to arrests, they’re not who the public originally
felt was at fault, as it includes many of Rosenberg’s own associates who were
betrayed by their friend, while the accused President held his ground and
survived the storms of accusations, actually emerging as a leader who didn’t
cave to populist fervor. The revelations
of the investigation ultimately exposed and helped clean up a corrupt
government. According to Simon
Granovsky-Larsen, an author who is a leading expert on political violence in
Guatemala, “The crimes that happen here are unthinkable in other parts of the
world and rival any political thriller. In
the first months, or even years, after a political crime like Rosenberg’s, it
is difficult to know what is a crazy conspiracy theory—and then one of those
crazy conspiracy theories turns out to be true. In other parts of the world, this could only
be fiction.”
