Eric Volz, the American who in 2007 was convicted and later acquitted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend in Nicaragua, is publishing a book about his ordeal. I’ve always had mixed feelings about the Volz case. On the one hand, he was almost certainly railroaded. It’s pretty hard to fabricate phone and chat records, and he had many eyewitnesses that placed him in Managua at the time the murder took place.
On the other hand, I found the U.S. media’s handling of the whole thing to be distasteful. I’ve been to San Juan del Sur, several times. It’s a scummy, weird place full of scummy, weird people. Volz sold real estate there, which in my book makes him one of the thousands of opportunistic foreigners who profit from the very fact that Central America’s legal systems and regulatory bodies are vulnerable to extra-legal influence.
That doesn’t mean he deserved to be convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. But it does significantly muddy the narrative that 60 Minutes, CNN, the Today Show, and others put forth, of a wholesome blond gringo cruelly set upon by a culture of lawless savages, as if this kind of thing never happens in America.
Now he’s drafting off that narrative with a book called Gringo Nightmare. It’s good business, but it doesn’t seem right.
The Nation has a long, wonky, wonderful article on Mexican maize cultivation, the effects of NAFTA, and the dangers of genetically-modified seeds. Author Peter Canby backs up his excellent writing with piles and piles of meticulous research. Not to be missed. [
Hitmen have assassinated the PRI candidate for governor of Tamaulipas State, Rodolfo Torre Cantú. Torre was gunned down along with six others at about 10:30 this morning on a highway on the way to a campaign event. Drug mafias are assumed to be responsible. [
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