Former members of Mexico student movement join Televisa talk show

 

MEXICO CITY -- They rallied and railed against the dominant media duopoly in Mexico during a crucial election campaign, but now former members of the student movement known as #YoSoy132 are set to appear on a new talk show produced by the Televisa network.

The revelation Wednesday startled observers and sparked outraged and mocking commentary on Twitter in Mexico, where #YoSoy132, or "I Am 132," was founded in May.

The leaderless movement emerged in protest of Enrique Peña Nieto, the presidential candidate who went on to win the July 1 election, and against Televisa and TV Azteca. Together, the media conglomerates nearly monopolize the airwaves in Mexico, making them a target of protests by #YoSoy132 for what it called the networks' biased and favorable coverage of the candidate.

"Sin Filtro," or "Without Filters," is slated to be a weekly Sunday night program on ForoTV, an arm of Televisa. The format is a round-table of university students who will discuss, "without censorship," the pressing issues facing Mexico, host Genaro Lozano said in an interview Wednesday.

Lozano, a 36-year-old international relations professor and frequent political commentator  on Mexican news outlets, is not a former member of the student movement, but he helped moderate a presidential debate that #YoSoy132 organized. The unprecedented unofficial meeting with three of the four presidential candidates (Peña Nieto declined to attend) was noteworthy for being organized by citizens and not the federal electoral authorities.

The first installment of "Sin Filtro" is expected to feature Antonio Attolini, a former #YoSoy132 campus representative and one of the most prominent and recognizable student voices during the election. Later, however, Attolini was effectively booted out of #YoSoy132 after other students regarded his many media appearances -- including on Televisa -- as detrimental and distracting to the group's agenda.

Lozano said he understood the criticisms of the new program but added that he would make efforts to reach out to students from a range of public and private universities in Mexico for future on-air panels. 

"There is a phobia toward the networks, and that's a historical issue in Mexico," Lozano told The Times. "But I think opening a new space of dialogue is always a good thing, and I hope other such spaces open up on other networks."

He added that he previously had taped a pilot for a similar program on another network, but only within the last two weeks did a contact with the Televisa conglomerate lead to "Sin Filtro." Lozano said he expects to sign a contract for the show with Televisa on Thursday.

Online, the official Twitter account of #YoSoy132 distanced itself once more from Attolini, saying: "#YoSoy132 does not have leaders precisely to avoid that the contradictions of one affect us all." Other Twitter users were less generous, with some dubbing the student panelists who appear on a "Sin Filtro" promo on YouTube as "traitors." (Links in Spanish.)

The promo itself is a study of what might arguably be called unintended irony.

Lozano identified the participants as all former members of #YoSoy132, now sitting before cameras belonging to the largest mass media company in the Spanish-speaking world, which is also currently tied to a trafficking ring investigation in Nicaragua.

"I'm tired of the fact that the old news media class gives us information in the same manner, and with bias," one panelist, a young woman wearing heavy-framed eyeglasses, emphatically declares. "That is bad for freedom of speech in the country and that's why we're here, to discuss what interests you, without filters."

Attolini, meanwhile, broke his silence on Twitter on Wednesday as the virtual booing and hissing rained down on him. By the afternoon, he tweeted: "The struggle will be infinite if we don't start gaining territory. Now we have it inside the wolf's cave. Let's say the things that are concealed."

"Sin Filtro" is scheduled to premiere Sunday, Oct. 28. Lozano said the likely topic will be media democratization, a central issue for the student movement during the campaign.

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Photo: Moderator Genaro Lozano appears in a screenshot of a promo for "Sin Filtro." Credit: Via YouTube

New film takes 'quiet' look at Mexico's drug-war violence

MEXICO CITY -- A new documentary on drug-war violence in Mexico is perhaps most remarkable for what it does not portray.

There are no shootouts, no decapitated bodies hanging from highway overpasses.

Instead, award-winning filmmaker Natalia Almada takes her audience into the quiet, busy world of the Humaya Gardens cemetery in Culiacan, the Sinaloa capital considered the historic center of Mexican drug trafficking.

Here death is relentless. With its garish mausoleums and extravagant crypts, the cemetery is the final resting place for numerous drug cartel capos and their legions of mostly young henchmen.

The film, "El Velador" ("The Night Watchman"), follows Martin, who works the graveyard shift, so to speak, at Humaya Gardens. He arrives at sunset, sits or dozes through the night (it is too dangerous to actually patrol the grounds after dark, he says, because of partying, trigger-happy drug goons) and tidies up in the morning, picking up beer bottles and sweeping before walking off in the yellow daylight.

"I fell in love with him as a character," Almada said, citing Martin's "quiet, stoic presence."

"He asks us to live with him, in the cemetery, at his pace," she said. "He is the clock of the cemetery."

Almada said her goal in making "El Velador" was to offer a "more contemplative" view of the violence that dominates Mexico today, not the sensationalistic portrait too common in the daily media.

"I wanted to humanize it, to put it on a more human scale," she said in a telephone interview from the U.S., where the documentary has been screening this week.

Almada's film is stark and sparse. There is virtually no dialogue. Martin occasionally offers a comment; we hear a single conversation among gravediggers about whether the latest kingpin has really been slain, as authorities claim.

What we do hear are the sounds of daily life amid the dead: a shovel hitting earth, a priest's intonations, a child playing hopscotch on tombs. And, from the radio in Martin's beat-up truck and his wavy black-and-white TV set, we hear the litany of drug-war mayhem as broadcasters read the "nota roja," the crime news. Bodies dumped roadside, young men kidnapped; "Culiacan has become a warzone," the broadcaster says.

And at times it seems the cemetery can barely keep up. In one sequence, the builders are finishing a gravesite even as a body waits in a hearse and a woman is heard wailing for her son; the concrete crypt is drying as mourning wreathes are being gathered.

"It's also the futility of it all," Almada said. The death toll rises and rises. Martin waters the dirt. A widow mops her husband's mausoleum, over and over again.

Almada filmed in Humaya Gardens off and on for several months in 2009-2010.

"El Velador" is a co-production of Altamura Films, Latino Public Broadcasting and American Documentary/POV. It begins airing in the Los Angeles area Friday on PBS affiliates. Check local listings.

You can watch a trailer here, and the film will be streaming on the POV website until the end of the year.

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Video: A trailer from the documentary "El Velador."  Credit: Altamura Films

Google executive detained in Brazil for YouTube videos

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- The head of operations for Google in Brazil has been arrested after the site declined to remove two videos that criticized a local candidate, federal police said.

Fabio Jose Silva Coelho was to be released from custody in Sao Paulo immediately after signing a pledge to face the charges in court. He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.

Google had no immediate official comment on the arrest but had said it was appealing the “court’s decision to remove a video from YouTube because, as a platform, we are not responsible for the content uploaded to our site."

Brazilian politicians widely pride themselves on the country's freedom of expression, and the Web is full of critical content. But there are laws that prohibit “slander, insults or defamation” of candidates during electoral season. The country votes in municipal polling Oct. 7.

In this case, two videos accuse Alcides Bernal, who is running for mayor of Campo Grande, of “instigating abortion, drunkenness, harming a minor physically, illegally enriching himself” and “contempt and prejudice against the poor,” according to the decision issued by a court in the sparsely populated southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

“We don’t want anything bad to happen to Google’s director,” Bernal told a local newspaper. “What we can’t allow is people with bad intentions, acting criminally, to use Google and YouTube to wage defamatory campaigns against people ... asking the people for votes.”

Last week, a similar order was issued for the arrest of Edmundo Luiz Pinto Balthazar, another Google executive, but a higher court overturned it, saying Balthazar couldn’t be held responsible for the contents of YouTube.

The most recent order was carried out Wednesday afternoon.

Courts have also backed a request by the National Union of Islamic Entities to force Google to remove the infamous “Innocence of Muslims” video, which sparked protests around the world. Google said Wednesday that it has not received any formal order in that case.

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Photo: Google executive Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, seen in a file photo, was detained by federal police Wednesday. Credit: Carol Carquejeiro / Agencia O Globo

U.S. ambassador to China caught in Beijing protest; car damaged

This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

BEIJING -- The car of the U.S. ambassador to China was surrounded Tuesday by a small group of demonstrators who damaged the vehicle and briefly prevented it from entering the U.S. Embassy compound in Beijing.

A YouTube video of the incident showed the protesters chanting slogans such as "down with the U.S. imperialists" and, in an apparent reference to the Chinese government's purchase of U.S. government debt, "return the money!"

The five-minute video shows a black car approaching the embassy and attempting to turn into the gate. As demonstrators surround the vehicle, several dozen Chinese police and uniformed guards rush to the scene. Several water bottles are thrown at the car and one man can be seen banging on the hood of the vehicle.

The security forces quickly surround the automobile and push the demonstrators away from it.

A State Department spokesperson said Ambassador Gary Locke's car sustained minor damage but the ambassador was unharmed. The spokesperson said U.S. officials had "registered our concern" with China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[Updated, 6:21 a.m. Sept. 19: Locke told reporters that he was on his way to the Japanese Embassy when his car was surrounded by a few dozen protesters who chanted slogans and briefly blocked his vehicle. "It was all over in a few minutes, and I never felt in danger," he said.]

The U.S. Embassy is located near the Japanese Embassy, which in recent days has been targeted by thousands of Chinese protesters voicing complaints over Tokyo's move to purchase islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by China. 

In an apparent reference to that dispute and the United States' security treaty with Japan, some of the demonstrators Tuesday chanted: "The U.S. government is the mastermind." 

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Video credit: YouTube

Mexico's first loss to U.S. at home, on a Mexican American's goal

MEXICO CITY -- It was a sweet Olympic gold victory for Mexican soccer, yes. But that was last week.

On Wednesday night, Mexico was defeated by the United States in a friendly match at the cavernous  high-altitude Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, 1-0, the first win for the U.S. on Mexican soil in 75 years of a storied and often bitter rivalry.

The only goal of the game came from U.S. defender Michael Orozco Fiscal, 26, a Mexican American native of Orange.

When it happened, in the 79th minute, utter silence seemed to befall the entire Mexican capital for a second or two. The United States had not won a single game at the Azteca, and Mexico had barely lost there against any opponent, in official matches or friendlies.

Watch the game-winning goal here:

Mexico's current sports superstar, Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez -- who didn't play for gold in London in the men's soccer final on Saturday -- attempted a few desperate strikes in the final minutes to salvage the game.

But U.S. goalie Tim Howard delivered crucial saves for the Americans, despite being battered with harrasment from the stands, a custom relished by fans at the Azteca. (At least one pesky person Wednesday was distracting the U.S. goalie with the light of a green laser.)

There was surprisingly little bad blood for Orozco in Mexico's media the next morning and among armchair analysts online.

Where could an ardently nationalist fan draw a line on criticism anyway? The U.S. friendly roster is rife with border-blurring athletes, a reflection of the complex historical migration patterns between the  countries, and maybe a little of that free-trade spirit that has defined the binational relationship since 1994.

Edgar Castillo, a defender born in Las Cruces, N.M., has played for both the Mexican and U.S. national teams. Midfielder Joe Corona -- half-Mexican, half-Salvadoran and born in Los Angeles -- plays professionally for Tijuana. And Herculez Gomez, born in L.A. to Mexican American parents, plays in Mexico for Pachuca.

Game-winner Orozco's parents are from the Mexican states of Durango and Queretaro. He was born in Orange County but plays professionally in Mexico for San Luis.

"That's history," he told one news outlet after the game. "It does leave a mark in my heart."

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Photo: U.S. defender Michael Orozco, right, celebrates with teammate Terrence Boyd after scoring during a friendly soccer game against Mexico in Mexico City, Aug. 15, 2012. Credit: Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press

Mexicans protesting election results crash televised wedding [Video]

MEXICO CITY -- They were images that could not have been scripted with any more dramatic irony. Come to think it, it looked quite a bit like a network-produced telenovela. Just gone painfully wrong.

During the latest wave of demonstrations against the results of the July 1 elections in Mexico, protesters in Mexico City on Saturday converged on a colonial church downtown and began chanting and shouting from the outside while an actor's wedding took place inside (links in Spanish).

The wedding of comedian Eugenio Derbez and actress and singer Alessandra Rosaldo was being aired live on the Canal de las Estrellas, the entertainment channel belonging the dominant media conglomerate Televisa. Televised weddings are a customary practice for a channel that tends to employ Televisa personalities' real lives as fodder for programming.

Protesters who had gathered by the tens of thousands in central Mexico City apparently got word of the televised event and dozens marched to the church from the Zocalo main square, reports said.

"Fraud! Fraud! Fraud!" the protesters shouted.

The chanting was audible over the Televisa live feed, making for excruciating footage as the bride and groom attempted to stick to their vows while the ruckus was heard loudly and clearly. See unofficial video here and a longer clip here.

There were no reports of arrests or injuries. But the incident stood out as an uncontrollable and spontaneous hijacking of air time in a tense period for Mexico's political and media establishment. Demonstrations have continued in several cities in rejection of apparent president-elect, Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Activists have rejected the election results due in part to widespread reports of vote-buying by the PRI. They are also targeting Televisa, which controls nearly all of Mexico's television channels in a duopoly formed with second network TV Azteca, and which they accuse of giving favorable coverage to Peña Nieto and the PRI for years.

Derbez, known for his role on the slapstick program "La Familia Peluche," is presumably enjoying his honeymoon and has not made public comments since the wedding. But on his Twitter account, the actor retweeted a message from a supporter claiming Derbez did not support Peña Nieto in the election and the demonstrators were "sheep."

Televisa's breezy newscast report on the Derbez-Rosaldo wedding does make a mention of the protesters, perhaps in acknowledgment that their shouting could not be ignored or edited out. 

Separately, in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, a man identified as a member of the PRI was arrested and jailed after he pointed a pistol at election protesters from a restaurant balcony in the capital city of Xalapa during Saturday demonstrations (link in Spanish).

Juan Pablo Franzoni Martinez, a PRI activist and restaurant investor, was detained and dragged away by police as his pants were coming down, creating embarrassing images that were then promptly ridiculed on Twitter. Authorities in Veracruz said Franzoni was booked on charges of threatening the protesters and for illegally carrying a firearm (link in Spanish).

There's plenty of video circulating of that incident too.

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Remembering a young Syrian filmmaker killed in Homs

The death of Bassel Shahade, a young Syrian filmmaker who studied in the United States and returned to his country to document the rebellion, was a harsh blow to his friends, who remembered him as a passionate adventurer, The Times writes. These are a few of the films Shahade made, along with others made in commemoration.

Shahade directed this documentary, “Singing to Freedom,” which features interviews about nonviolent resistance with Syrian attorney Razan Zeitouna, political theorist Noam Chomsky and author Erica Chenoweth. It shows Syrian protesters chanting, “The people want the downfall of the regime!”

Another short film called “Saturday Morning Gift,” widely circulated after Shahade died, is based on an interview with a young boy recalling his experiences in the 2006 war in Lebanon between Hezbollah paramilitaries and Israel. The film is intimate and spare, almost dreamlike.

Shahade filmed and edited this third film, “Carrying Eid to Camps,” which shows people handing out food and toys in camps for the displaced during the Muslim holiday of Eid. When the film was created, a severe drought had plunged millions of Syrians into extreme poverty. "Thanks to everyone who contributed in carrying Eid to camps of the drought displaced people,” the video caption says.

After Shahade was killed in Homs, this tribute video surfaced, appearing to show him teaching other Syrians. Shahade came back to his country to share his skills with amateur videographers.

This last video is said to show friends of Shahade standing around his coffin with pictures of him, reciting prayers. Toward the end of the video, a group of men load the coffin onto a vehicle.

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Photo: Bassel Shahade. Credit: Mohamad Khouja