Eric Volz, the American who was convicted of murdering his Nicaraguan ex-girlfriend in 2007 and then freed earlier this year after serving time in a Nicaraguan prison, has contracted with St. Martin Press in New York to produce his written memoir of his ordeal, according to his website. Personally, I have remained fascinated by the story -- perhaps because I am roughly his age and work in Central America. Yet there is something Dostoyefsky-like about most all of the elements of the bizarre back-story, from the accounts of his alibi and innocence and the clearly biased trial he underwent to accounts of his personality as a devious expat or as a social entrepreneur working on an eco-tourism magazine that both the leftist Nicaraguan press and the unflinching American support launched over the internet spoke about (on opposite ends) with absolute certainty. In the media hodge-podge that existed around his case, I don't know that anything new or convincing will result from his memoir, and it will apparently follow what appears to be the generally supportive book released last month (The Bridge, by Michael Glasgow).
Still, I am curious to see what sort of tone it takes; since I imagine that such a memoir would offer insight into the mind of the writer, if not unbiased facts on the case (a la OJ's If I Did It). I would also hope that the book focuses on moving forward in the case, and not just Volz's own harrowing Nicaraguan Midnight Express story -- after all, there is still a murderer on the loose in San Juan del Sur.
To me, the more interesting story, regardless of what truth emerges or in which one believes, is the cultural touchstone that his case has come to symbolize in Nicaragua; in newly Sandinista Nicaragua, where anti-Americanism is again on the rise, Volz's name now invokes all things disdainful about American imperialism and exceptionalism.
On both trips I've taken to Nicaragua this year, I have found myself asking taxi drivers if they still talk about Volz's case. "Not too much anymore," they've told me. But once asked if they think he was innocent or guilty, they invariably launch into a soliloquy about foreign privilege, media bias, corrupt courts, small-town ruralism in Nicaragua, and a number of other issues not even so closely connected to his case -- all which goes to show how deeply Eric Volz's case struck at the heart of a country with a lot of open wounds.
To me, the more interesting story, regardless of what truth emerges or in which one believes, is the cultural touchstone that his case has come to symbolize in Nicaragua; in newly Sandinista Nicaragua, where anti-Americanism is again on the rise, Volz's name now invokes all things disdainful about American imperialism and exceptionalism.
On both trips I've taken to Nicaragua this year, I have found myself asking taxi drivers if they still talk about Volz's case. "Not too much anymore," they've told me. But once asked if they think he was innocent or guilty, they invariably launch into a soliloquy about foreign privilege, media bias, corrupt courts, small-town ruralism in Nicaragua, and a number of other issues not even so closely connected to his case -- all which goes to show how deeply Eric Volz's case struck at the heart of a country with a lot of open wounds.
