In the 1970s, a respected journalist disappears, only to emerge as the public relations manager and close colleague to Donaldo Álvarez Ruiz, the minister of interior for one of Guatemala's most repressive and bloodiest regimes. Calling himself "The Mole," Elias Barahona shocked his fellow journalists, who believed him to be a traitor—only to learn later that he risked his life as an infiltrator to leak clandestine information to the guerrilla movement. Through some of the last interviews with him before his death, Guatemalan filmmaker Anaïs Taracena bravely and artfully pieces together Barahona's incredible, heroic story, as well as his testimony in 2014 on one of the worst urban massacres to take place during the war in Guatemala: the Spanish Embassy massacre in 1980. With interviews from fellow journalists, family members and a film archivist who protects some of the last deteriorating images of the war, Taracena uncovers a deep and hidden history of Guatemala. Heather Haynes
International Spectrum program supported by
