García Belsunce case: the crime that the whole country is talking about (again)

11/09/2020 17:16

• Clarín.com

• Opinion

Updated 11/09/2020 5:17 PM

From the beginning, the murder of María Marta García Belsunce had all the elements to become a case that attracted general attention.

She was a wealthy woman, fairly well known, surnamed with prosapia.

And she was

in Recoleta as the alleged victim of an accident in her country house until it was discovered that she had five bullets inside her skull.

Today, 18 years later, the same can be said.

This is well reflected in the documentary "Carmel: who killed María Marta?", Which premiered on Netflix last week and which managed to put crime

.

Of impeccable workmanship and powerful production, launched for a global audience, the four-part docuserie directed by Alejandro Hartmann is right in showing a lot

: the question in the title, which reveals both who follows the case from the beginning and whoever have discovered it now, it

.

It is what attracts, anguish and unworthy at the same time.

Beyond the police side of the brutal homicide, two aspects that run through the documentary deserve a reflection.

The first is the reiteration, by several of those interviewed, of a concept as popular as it is erroneous, to which

also appeal

: believing that the media impose

the public agenda

always based on certain interests .

Thus, the crime of María Marta would have had such repercussions due to a kind of cruelty against the widower and the victim's family.

María Marta García Belsunce and her widower, Carlos Carrascosa.

Photo: Netflix

The truth is that the media, at least the independent ones, simply try to

with the issues that interest their readers / listeners / viewers.

It is a question of survival, one of the most difficult tasks facing an editor.

The higher that tuning (which today can be much tighter thanks to the measurements that exist of the notes in their digital version), the

.

On the contrary, the more you publish topics that do not matter to your followers, you will break that pact and they will migrate to another medium.

If the García Belsunce case "occupied more covers than the Trial of the Boards", as they say there, it is simply because

.

The same is happening today with the success of the documentary, which is among the most watched on Netflix.

The other question is perhaps more obvious and surely more serious:

is so exposed that it is shocking.

In a section of the Carrascosa trial, the discussion between the defense attorney and the judge over the temperature at which the air conditioning in the courtroom was set is a capital symbol, unfortunately comical, of how pathetic, flat, and inefficient it can be.

In addition, there is everything else, what we already knew.

A funeral in which a family with a certain power moves its connections so that the Police do not enter the crime scene and obtain a trumped death certificate in front of a Cassation prosecutor.

The

in the septic

of the Carmel house, curiously found by the same person who said he flushed it, and another prosecutor who naturally allows that person to participate in a key collection of evidence that should be reserved to experts.

Not to mention the trial of Carrascosa, innocent of the crime in the first instance, sentenced to life imprisonment in the second and

Buenos Aires

after five years in jail.

Or what happens with the other eternal suspect, Nicolás Pachelo, whose trial is just now about to begin, when he has been in prison for three years and 18 years of the crime of María Marta.

The García Belsunce case has a myriad of condiments that arouse both curiosity and genuine curiosity.

But what makes it transcendent is a characteristic that it unfortunately shares with many other legal cases, such

: it speaks of impunity, gross and generalized impunity.

Look also

Carlos Carrascosa and the crime of María Marta García Belsunce: "I need to die innocent"

Behind the scenes of Carmel: who killed María Marta ?, the Netflix documentary about the Belsunce case