that several witnesses would testify that he had been at his market stall at the time of the murder. He had no link to the victim, no motive and no criminal history. The judge, Hector Palomares, found Zúñiga guilty and sentenced him to 20 years behind bars.
A young man’s sudden abduction off the streets of the capital is not unheard of in México. Under intense pressure to solve rising crime, especially by drug gangs, police are sometimes suspected of grabbing and charging the first hapless person they come upon, often a poor person without resources for a defense. Once someone is arrested, everyone in the system, from police to prosecutor to judge to even the court-provided defense attorney, has every motivation to keep the defendant in jail.
The same year Zúñiga was arrested, Hernández and Negrete completed their first courtroom documentary, “El Túnel” (“The Tunnel”), a damning short that stirred debate about reforming México’s constitution to include presumption of innocence. “El Túnel” featured the case of Marco, a young man convicted of stealing a car even though the victim told detectives, prosecutors and judges that the detainee was not the culprit. Marco’s release led Hernández and Negrete to launch Lawyers with Cameras, their crusade to open the Mexican legal process to public scrutiny. It also brought a flood of requests for help, including a plea on behalf of the determined and eloquent Zúñiga, whose case rested on a single eyewitness. But by the time Hernández and Negrete were contacted, Zúñiga had lost his appeal and seemed doomed to spend 20 years in prison.
Hernández and Negrete spent months filming in Iztapalapa, the neighborhood where Zúñiga lived, to verify his alibi. Given the difficulty of documenting cases of wrongful conviction in México and the scarcity of journalistic
...
Preventing the exorbitant cost of student mobility
The societal cost of a high school dropout has been calculated into actual dollars and cents and circulated for public awareness. What is less known, though, is the exorbitant cost to a child’s potential achievement caused by switching schools for reasons other than grade level progression – an ...
Legislating an end to racial profiling
No one denies – at least openly – that racial profiling is bad practice. The question at hand, and one raised during a Senate Committee hearing on civil and human rights last week, is how to end it.
On Tuesday, April 17, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights ...
Community honors beloved poet, humanitarian
Praise, good memories and unconditional love were abundant this week as friends and family gathered to remember humanitarian and poet Abelardo “Lalo” Delgado at the 5th Annual Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival held at the St. Cajetan’s Center on the Auraria Campus, sponsored by the MSCD President’s ...
Young mothers share literary inspirations
The roots of Día de los Niños (April 30th) began in Latin América as a holiday honoring children and has been adopted by the United States with a variety of festivities that highlight the beauty of children Through The Weekly Issue/El Semanario’s Student Writing Project, we highlight the ...
No one denies – at least openly – that racial profiling is bad practice. The question at hand, and one raised during a Senate Committee hearing on civil and human rights last week, is how to end it.
On Tuesday, April 17, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights ...
view more videos
view more photos
El Semanario New Mexico 
El Semanario