Mexico Runs Away From the Truth

New York Times: In December 2014, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico traveled to the state of Guerrero, where months earlier 43 college students who were headed to a protest in Mexico City had vanished under murky circumstances and were presumed to have been massacred.

“Let’s overcome this phase and take a step forward,” Mr. Peña Nieto said then. He must have been deluded in thinking that he could turn the page on a human rights atrocity that outraged the nation when the government had no answers about who committed the crime and why. Read more.

Mexico almost dead last in impunity index

Mexico News Daily: The numbers confirm what most people already know: impunity in Mexico is about as bad as it can get.

With 75.7 points, Mexico trails behind only the Philippines, at 80. To determine a country’s level on the impunity index the study analyzed 14 indicators, including the number of police and judges per 100,000 inhabitants, the incidence of extrajudicial executions and kidnappings and the percentage of people incarcerated without sentences.A new analysis called the Global Impunity Index 2015 (IGI) ranked Mexico at second from the bottom on an international scale. It also found that a country’s wealth does not favorably impact its impunity index, nor does increasing police funding without ensuring effective judicial processes. Read more. 

Mexico looks the other way as contractors fleece oil giant Pemex

Reuters: The state-owned petroleum giant Pemex paid $9 million in 2011 to have an oil rig towed halfway round the world, from the United Arab Emirates to the Gulf of Mexico. When government auditors looked at the contract, they turned up some problems.

The rig had the wrong equipment for the assignment, according to a report by Mexican congressional auditors. And the tow job itself was a fiction: The rig didn’t need to be moved. It was already in the Gulf of Mexico. Read more. 

'Justice for all: military jurisdiction before the Supreme Court'

El Universal: Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Program Translation
See Spanish Original.

Santiago A. Canton. In contradiction with the basic principles of our democracies, there have always existed powerful groups in society that create institutional structures to limit the capacity of the rest of society to know, control, evaluate, and judge the actions of its members. Military jurisdiction is one such structure that provides numerous examples of flagrant violations of human rights that remain in impunity.

During World War I in France, Military Justice executed hundreds of French soldiers after decisions made by the Councils of War. The French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, expressed a phrase that would become history: "military justice is to justice, what military music is to music." The expression is of enormous use to understand an important aspect of justice in a democratic society: justice must be one and one alone for all, without exception. No one can be above the law; the long arm of the justice must reach everyone equally, "without distinction to race, color, sex, language, religion, political opinion, or other basis, national or social origin, economic position, birth, or other condition," as established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Like many of the norms and institutions in Latin America’s countries, military justice is an inheritance of the Spanish Monarchy of the XVIII century, which sought to protect its army from the consequences of its wars abroad. It responded to a military that protected the Monarchy from the internal uprisings that challenged the continuity of the regime. Military justice also prevented the civil justice system from affecting persons charged with ensuring the stability and protection of the same Monarchy. Read more.

Colonel in Cover-up Case to Be Tried in Mexico Civilian Court

NY Times: Elisabeth Malkin. Mexico City — In May 2011, Jethro Sánchez, a 27-year-old engineer, was detained by the Mexican Army, and found tortured and killed. An army colonel was accused of ordering soldiers to hide the body to cover up the crime, and the case vanished in the country’s maze of military justice.

But Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the colonel should be tried in civilian courts, a decision that human rights groups say could upend the way Mexico deals with rights abuses committed by the military in the course of fighting the country’s pervasive drug war. Read more.

The Kingpins: The fight for Guadalajara

The New Yorker: At the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Enrique Peña Nieto, who is forty-five, boyishly handsome, and generally expected to be the next President of Mexico, was asked to name three books that had influenced him. He mentioned the Bible, or, at least, “some parts” (unspecified), and “The Eagle’s Throne,” a Carlos Fuentes novel (though he named the historian Enrique Krauze as the author). And, for a few excruciating minutes, that was all he could come up with. The crowd laughed wickedly. Peña Nieto’s wife, a former soap-opera star, squirmed in the front row. His teen-age daughter didn’t help matters when, in a tweet, she scorned “all of the idiots who form part of the proletariat and only criticize those they envy.

That debacle was in December. It did nothing to slow Peña Nieto’s well-financed march toward the election, which will take place on July 1st, but it did provide a welcome distraction for Guadalajarans, who are justly proud of their annual book fair. It is the second largest in Latin America, drawing more than half a million visitors, nearly two thousand publishers, and hundreds of authors, including, over the years, Nadine Gordimer, William Styron, and Toni Morrison. Guadalajarans sometimes offer it up as Exhibit A for the case that the city is a civilized place where life goes on unmarked by the violence that disfigures large parts of Mexico. Read more.

MexicoBlog Editorial: The U.S. Feeds Violence, Corruption and Impunity in Mexico

In the past few weeks a number of Mexican activists have been brazenly killed, attacked or kidnapped. Twelve journalists have been killed in Mexico in 2011. Local and state government officials are all too frequently assassinated. Human Rights groups have collected evidence that the Mexican army is systematically engaging in torture, forced disappearances and murder.

The cartels continue to engage in grisly tortures and murders of all who oppose them. Drug war deaths in Mexico over the past five years now exceed 45,000. Possibly 10,000 people have disappeared. The federal government has stopped issuing any accounting. Very few of these deaths and disappearances have been investigated, and only a miniscule number of investigations have resulted in convictions.

Meanwhile, large numbers of local, state and federal police are accused of corruption--of working for the drug cartels. Most recently, the entire local police force of the city of Veracruz was dismissed and replaced by the Mexian army.

Violence, corruption and impunity continue to overwhelm the rule of law in Mexico. Eleven years ago, with the election of Vicente Fox, the first president in seventy years who was not from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), it was thought that Mexico was moving from an authoritarian government, rife with corruption, to a democratic government that would cleanse itself and live under the rule of law. President Fox made a campaign against corruption a centerpiece of his administration.

But Fox's campaign and the campaign of his successor, Felipe Calderón, against the drug cartels have evidently come to naught. The violence of the drug war continues, as does that against human rights and other activists, journalists and innocent Mexicans. Violence, corruption and impunity reign.

Origins of Mexican corruption

A number of scholars and students of Mexican history have pointed out that corruption, violence and impunity have been forces running throughout Mexican history from the Spanish Conquest up to today. Spanish viceroys and other officials in New Spain frequently bought their positions and were expected to extort money from Mexicans to pay their way. Public position was a means to private gain.

Claudio Lomnitz, professor of history at Columbia University (Understanding the history of corruption in Mexico) describes corruption as an intricate system of exchanges in which support for public officials is given in return for certain privileges. Payments of money to ensure that routine services are rendered are also part of the mix.

The New York Times journalist and one-time Mexico bureau chief, Anthony DePalma once asserted, “Corruption is not a characteristic of the system in Mexico . . . it is the system.” It is estimated that the drug cartels spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year paying off officials at all levels of Mexican government, who in turn use the system of bribes to play off one cartel against another. (see: The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico, by Peter Andreas)

History of violence

After independence was won from Spain in 1821, but lacking preparation for democratic self-rule, Mexico spent most of a century in coup d'etats, civil wars and political assassinations. While the coups and civil wars ended with the rise of PRI to power in the 1920s, assassinations of political leaders at the national level have occurred as recently as that of Luis Donaldo Colosio in 1994. Assassinations of state and local officials are still a regular occurrence.

Lack of rule of law

Stephen D. Morris, in an article published in the Mexican Law Journal,  Mexico’s Political Culture: the Unrule of Law and Corruption as a Form of Resistance, points out that Mexico has never functioned under the rule of law. Mexicans, he says, have never given any government legitimacy. They do not trust the law, government institutions or politicians. There is a pervasive, underlying assumption that all political acts are self-serving and corrupt.

Mexicans then use this belief to justify their own evasion of the law when it is to their benefit and they do not think they will be caught, as in avoiding paying taxes. This is expressed in the dicho or saying, "Obedezco pero no cumplo," "I obey but I don't fulfill." Because political leaders are perceived as ignoring or using the law for personal ends, a citizen's manipulating or getting around the law is seen as a legitimized form of protest. Impunity begets impunity.

Ongoing impunity

Furthermore, Morris points out, the lack of a functioning justice system--police, courts and prisons--leads to the conclusion that, as there is no justice, no rule of law, it is legitimate to use extra-legal  means to seek justice. Demonstrations that block streets and highways, the commandeering of buses and radio stations, even vigilante killing of apparent criminals and corrupt police are justified. Beyond that, for those who enter the explicit criminal realm, there are no limits to the uses of violence. 

The U.S. inserts itself 

And where does the the U.S. stand in relation to all of this violence, corruption and impunity? Throughout the past year, the US law enforcement role in Mexico drug war has grown significantly. The Merida Initiative, administered by the State Department, has gone beyond providing miltary and police equipment to seeking to promote the rule of law by training Mexican police, attorneys, prosecutors and judges and funding NGOs to undertake projects to develop the "rule of law" in Mexico. The U.S. Army Northern Command trains Mexican soldiers. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has hired former Mexican police and government officials to act as undercover spies of the cartels.

However, as Morris points out, "without addressing the critical issue of legitimacy, more enforcement tools, a stronger state and more laws will be insufficient. If government and society are unable to control the police, then more police will not solve the problem; it will exacerbate it." There is ample evidence that U.S. trained military personnel have gone on to become paramiltary and criminal forces in Guatemala. The infamous Zetas are possibly an example in Mexico.

Then there was the revelation that the DEA has been actively laundering millions of dollars for the drug cartels.  As the New York Times put it, "The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime." This came after the revelation that the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency (ATF) was letting guns "walk" across the border in Operation Fast and Furious. At what point do law enforcement tactics become facilitation of crime and corruption?

But overriding all is the fact that the drug market in the U.S. provides billions of dollars a year to the Mexican cartels and that it is for control of these billions that the cartels are so violently fighting. This fact was presented recently by the presidents of Mexico and all the Central American countries, when they stated that "a significant reduction in the demand for illegal drugs" in the United States and other drug consuming countries would be desirable.

They then diplomatically but pointedly added, "Nevertheless, if that is not possible, as recent experience demonstrates, the authorities of the consuming countries ought then to explore the possible alternatives to eliminate the exorbitant profits of the criminals, including regulatory or market oriented options to this end. Thus, the transit of substances that continue provoking high levels of crime and violence in Latin American and Caribbean nations will be avoided."

Undermining the fragile rule of law

Democracy and the rule of law are new and fragile processes in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Violence, corruption and impunity have been the rule for centuries and remain major threats to the stability of these nations and the well-being of their peoples. The U.S.'s continuing insistence on drug prohibition, while requiring and funding a war in Latin America against drug suppliers, only serves to create dynamics and provide the money that fuels that violence, corruption and impunity. Against this, democracy and the rule of law stand little chance. 

Drug War in Ciudad Juarez: Federal forces sully Mexico's war on drugs

Reuters: "Business owners, security experts and ordinary residents (in Ciudad Juarez) told Reuters that official corruption at all levels of the security forces has fanned violence in the city, with local and federal police and soldiers complicit in, or actually committing, many of the murders.

The human rights commission of the local state of Chihuahua registered 1,250 complaints of torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions by the army during its two-year deployment in Ciudad Juarez. It counts 400 similar grievances against the federal police who moved in when the soldiers were pulled out. These numbers document only 20 percent of the violations taking place, it estimates." read more

Movement for Peace with Justice: Citizen Security and Human Rights in Mexico Hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Statement of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity presented today to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington , D.C.

Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity: Oct. 27, "Outrage at the situation of generalized violence in Mexico has coalesced in the MPJD - a national movement of victims and citizens determined to promote peace with justice and dignity. Adherents of the MPJD believe the situation of systematic human rights violations and widespread impunity among the perpetrators of violence has created a true national emergency.

This document aims to (1) summarize the actions of the MPJD; (2) present the context of citizen security in Mexico; (3) discuss the rights of victims and obligations of the Mexican state under the Inter-American system; (4) recount the demands of the MPJD on the Mexican State; and (5) present the paradigmatic cases of human rights violations the movement has documented and continues to pursue." read more

Justice, perhaps: Mass arrests take in 1,000 in Mexican human trafficking sting

We will have to wait and see if this leads to any actual trials and convictions. The ratio of reported crimes to convictions in Mexico is 98:2.

Mass arrests take in 1,000 in Mexican human trafficking sting - Monsters and Critics: "Police arrested more than 1,000 people in a sting targeting human trafficking operations in northern Mexico, national media reported Sunday.

The arrests caught up 500 men and 530 women accused of human trafficking and force minors into prostitution. The sting, in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez also freed 20 girls, reported the Mexican Security Ministry overnight into Sunday."