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In 2020 there were more than 1,600 murders in Juarez City. A scary figure when read, but soon forgotten. The crimes occupy tabloid headlines, stir western consciences a little and remain in the newspaper library. There, many have become desensitized. The people of Ciudad Juárez have learned to live with crime, with the fear that hitmen could enter your house and kill you. The authorities do nothing. He drug trafficking it is a too juicy business and with too many interests both in Mexico as in the US.
Among all the crowd, blood and pain, there are different stories. One of them is the one that collects Blood on our side, the Spanish short film that talks about the consequences of drug trafficking on the Mexican border and that has produced Muzungu, a Spanish company that works as a cooperative and searches for social and political histories around the world. With this overwhelming work, nothing Manichean and that freezes the blood, they won the last Austin Film Festival, which classifies them to enter among the candidates for the Oscar for Best Short Film.
The award caught its director by surprise, Rodrigo Hernandez, which acknowledges to this newspaper that “it was a great joy to win”, since in some way “we returned the trust to our production company and to Al Jazeera, who bet on the project.” Blood on our side follow in the footsteps of Ana Lorena, a forensic investigator for the Mexican police. How he lives day by day surrounded by scandalous death figures, with a precarious media and in the midst of a political struggle between Mexico and the United States with the same victims as always: those below. Without underlining, without didacticisms, the short X-rays a society forced to live in the midst of a spiral of violence.
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“We wanted to know what this work was like from a woman who is an expert in one of the cities with the most femicides in the world. How she faces her work, but also the danger that her day-to-day life entails,” adds Hernández, who highlights another key to the job , how violence has been primed with women. Around eleven die every day according to studies, and 90% of all cases remain unsolved. In the case of Ana Lorena, “four of her colleagues have been murdered over the years, so we were interested in the personal story of someone who works there and how she deals with difficulties”,
A work that focuses on public institutions, on the lack of means because it does not even interest them to solve these crimes. “It was very interesting for us to be able to treat it from the perspective of Mexican public institutions, which are absorbed by work and consumed by impunity and corruption,” he stresses. That corruption that, unfortunately, “has a difficult solution.”
“It is a rotten system from within, since the beginning of this war that began more than ten years ago, with President Felipe Calderón, who decided to start a senseless war, just to legitimize himself, and there began the great hunt between groups throughout the world. country. I do not believe that the police in those areas can isolate themselves from corruption, what I believe is that there are certain people in all the security forces who try to do their job, either for a matter of morality or to avoid staining your name. They are aware of their limitations and are not risking so much because they know that there is impunity, “says the director.
The US, like Europe, are the great beneficiaries of all this, and we wanted to reflect this, as the blood remains on the Mexican side, while the benefits fall on the other side
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The short also shows double standards. From the outside, Mexico is blamed for the violence generated by drug trafficking, but no one points out to the rest of the links: “The United States, like Europe, are the great beneficiaries of all this, and we wanted to reflect this, as the blood remains on the side Mexican, while profits and business fall on the other side. The large amounts of money that are laundered with drug trafficking, the businesses that not only the bosses do, but also politicians or businessmen, that is done on the side of the United States and Europe. “
“Why isn’t more invested in Colombia or Bolivia to end the problem? Well, because unfortunately they are part of the drug trafficking chain,” says Rodrigo Hernández, who believes that no American institution is currently being saved: ” how from the CIA to the DEA, passing through the coastal police are corrupted ”, he continues.
For the director, the solutions begin “from our side and from the legalization of several of these drugs and the search for capital.” “Try to understand, and limit, how big banks and global corporations are the ones who are benefiting from drug trafficking. In the case of Mexico, it is more complicated because according to a study by Congress, drug trafficking controls more than 10 percent of the real economy, because they have invested in all kinds of businesses: gas stations, highways, other businesses. This could be avoided in countries like Italy, but corruption affects more. It is not a question of the Mexican economy, but of the world economy and that is more difficult and limiting. “
Blood on our side She is the daughter of her producer, born as a cooperative and focused on social and political issues, those that are increasingly scarce in an industry dominated by televisions, but Rodrigo Hernández is clear that “what should lead us to reflect within Spain it is if there is an interest in creating these social and political projects that show that they work outside. “
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