Monday, May 25, 2009

"Mentes Perversas"

I think Colom shouldset up a competition for international crime writers with a substantial cash prize for the one who can come up with the finest conspiracy scenario which a) exonerates the President and b) is convincingly murky, enredado and Guatemalan.

I've given the matter a little thought myself. There are a couple of rather obvious solutions to the puzzle which don't depend on Rosenberg having been a crazed suicidal maniac.

The first (which borrows from Harlan Coben's Tell No One) is that the body the cops picked up beside the stricken bike and subsequently buried wasn't Lic. Rosenberg after all and that the latter has been spirited out the country with a new identity. A bit too obvious that one, and Rosenberg had a family.

A second possibility is that Rosenberg genuinely believed that his life was in danger and went to the newspaper in good faith, but the hack who made the video subsequently tipped off some shady right-wing conspirator types that he knew where to find a man who believed he was about to be the victim of a political murder and said tipos thought this was too good an opportunity to pass up. The trouble with this one, for Colom at least, is that while it clears him of the assassination, it leaves open the possibility that everything Rosenberg alleges in the video is factual.

On the other hand, suppose Rosenberg had misconstrued the deaths of Musa and his daughter and went to consult Mario David García with his suspicions. The allegations in the video are intriguingly non-specific. ("Todos los Guatemaltecos lo sabemos" wouldn't stand up in court, even in Guatemala.) The conservative journalist, said to have supported pronunciamientos in his day, could then have imagined a certain scenario and persuaded a panicky and impressionable Rosenberg to participate...


Suggestions welcomed...


2 comments:

Unknown said...

How about, Rosenberg believed his client was targeted by Colom, and believed he was in danger from Colom, but was killed by Colom's enemies to give credibility to the theory, and thus destabilize the government?

Alternative: Rosenberg was paranoid, and had made other enemies who had their own reasons (unknown to us and possibly not as interesting as those he cites in the video) for killing him and his client.

I can think of a great many scenarios beyond those I have read about in the press.

scott said...

I'm going with a conspiracy against Colom as well that involves Rosenberg genuinely believing the gov't was out to kill him, because he was manipulated to think that way.

Every possibility to me is bizarre, but Colom being guilty (of ordering the killing, at least) is most bizarre of all.