Maybe you’ve seen a nature program that tells the story of the long migration of the Monarch butterfly, those beautiful, delicate orange and black lepidoptera that amazingly make their way over vast distances from all over North America, from as far north as Canada, to their winter hatchery in the sanctuaries of Mexico.
Maybe you’ve raised one from crysalis to flight in an elementary school class, or learned of the importance of milkweed to their existence.
But if you’ve ever heard of them referred to as “Brides of the Sun” carrying “the Souls of the Dead,” romantic nicknames for a creature whose vast egg-laying flocks cover the pine and oyamel trees of El Rosario and other forests of Michoacán, you’ve absorbed the life work of Homero Gómez González, their greatest champion in Mexico, “The Guardian of the Monarchs.”
That’s the title of a Mexican documentary about Homero Gómez, who suffered the fate of many an environmental activist, journalist or citizen who dares to cross the many gangs spread across the country. He was murdered in 2020, and as Emiliano Ruprah’s film makes clear, just getting the government and the police to admit that pretty obvious fact has proven difficult.
The corruption runs deep, and the well-intentioned don’t have a chance.
Ruprah’s film sounds the alarm about this now-endangered species, “a world heritage” as Gómez often noted in videos promoting tourism to see the magic conclave of butterflies gathering near his home. “Guardian” doesn’t just memorialize Gómez. It lays out the threats to the butterflies, the interests that want the lumber that the butterflies flock to in order to lay their eggs, the land armed, police-protected gangs illegally clear cut and plant avocado trees on, the politicians they prop up and the locals and cops they intimidate and kill when somebody crosses them.
The entire police department around Ocampo, and El Soldado, where Gómez’s body was found in a well, was put under investigation after his disappearance.
And yet the police official in charge of the investigation, Mario Gerardo Pinedo, has the gall to sit on camera and insist there was “no evidence” of foul play, despite coroners, reporters and others bringing up all the evidence to the contrary.
Others who seem connected to the disappearance and murder mysteriously turned up dead in the months that followed.
The viewer can be excused for barking at the screen every time Pinedo shows up, “How do you sleep at night?”
Politicians, including a now-former governor, Silvano Aureoles, are implicated. Some defend their actions on camera, others — like politician Karina Alvarado — filed petitions that somehow immunize them from investigation, a pretty damning step to take.
It’s frustrating to see any injustice committed in plain sight and not dealt with, and that’s the feeling this solid, well-intentioned film leaves you with.
Ruprah uses interviews, coverage of festivals, the history of butterfly tourism (falling off due to violence and monarch decline) and reenactments to tell this sad, touching and infuriating story.
But “The Guardian of the Monarchs” leaves one with only glimmers of hope that justice will ever be done — exposing those who don’t tell what they know — or that anything will ever get better. As long as the poverty, the corruption and lawlessness that accompanies it and the avocado-mania that finances forest destruction exist, the monarchs are threatened. If they’re not doomed altogether, it’s because of brave activists like Homero Gómez González and people who demand that his sacrifice be avenged and not be in vain.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity
Cast: Homero Gómez González, Silvano Aureoles, Rebeca Valencia González, Mario Gerardo Pineo, Homero Gómez González IV and Amado Gómez
Credits: Scripted and directed by Emiliano Ruprah. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:32
