Directed
by Luis Estrada, Herod's Law (La Ley de Herodes) is
a satirical tale that takes place (and was filmed) in the
desert town of San Pedro de los Saguaros, México,
where angry non-Spanish-speaking Indian residents, according
to the fable, lynched three corrupt mayors from 1944 to
1949. Accordingly, López (played by Pedro Armendárez,
Jr.), a provincial official in the ruling political party
appoints junkyard custodian Juan Vargas (played by Damián
Alcázar), a naïve party member, to serve as
mayor, hoping that he will put the lid on the problems
of the one hundred or so villagers so that there will be
no impediment to his ambition to be appointed the next
governor of the state (presumably Sonora, in view of the
omnipresent giant Saguaro cactus). In the beginning, Mayor
Vargas is eager to transform the village, following the
slogan of his party--modernization and social justice.
Lacking a budget to improve the village, his idealistic
words prove empty, and Dr. Morales (played by Eduardo López
Rojas) of the opposition party threatens to defeat him
in the next election if he fails to shut down the local
brothel, operated by Doña Lupe (played by Isela
Vega). Even the village priest (played by Guillermo Gil)
tries to shake him down, so he returns to his patron, López,
for advice. The advice is to follow "Herod's Law," namely, "Fuck
or be fucked!" That is, López tells Vargas
to extort taxes, to bribe lawbreakers (armed with a book
containing the laws of México), and to enforce his
authority with a gun. When Vargas returns to the small
village, he arranges a banquet for the local leaders; at
the end of the meal, he announces disingenuously that he
will bring electricity to San Pedro de los Saguaros, having
hired a gringo (played by Alex Cox), a supposed American
engineer. Soon, he is collecting a lot of money in bribes
and sleeping with the women in the local brothel. When
he tries to collect an excessive amount of money from the
townspeople, in cash or in kind, Dr. Morales goes to see
López to complain. While Dr. Morales is away, Vargas
tries to extort so much money from Doña Lupe that
she recruits a bodyguard, who roughs up Vargas; later that
night, Vargas returns to shoot both of them in cold blood.
After the bodies are discovered, Vargas coerces townspeople
into testifying that Dr. Morales hired the town drunk to
kill Doña Lupe and her bodyguard. However, Vargas
orders Dr. Morales to leave town, so he returns to López
to report that the town is in chaos. López, who
tried to shoot his rival for the governorship of the state,
then goes to the town. However, the ruling party is evidently
delighted when Vargas kills him shortly after his arrival.
In the epilog, Vargas is addressing the Congress in México
City as a delegate. A standing ovation greets his proposal
for the party to do what he proposed for himself in San
Pedro de los Saguaros--to stay in power indefinitely. When Herod's
Law tried to debut in México in 1999,
the government tried to stop the film from being shows
in cinemas, believing that the story vilified the ruling
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Although the
film could be viewed as a mere comical satire, voters clearly
got the hint, and Vicente Fox of the opposition Partido
Acción Nacional was elected president of México
in the year 2000, thereby ending seventy-one years of PRI
rule. More profoundly, there is perhaps a serendipitous
insight: Politicians who are less than erudite are more
likely to use crude methods to cling to power, a theory
that could also be tested north of the Río Grande.
Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated Herod's
Law for an award as this year's best film
promoting democracy as well as best film exposé of
2003. MH
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