January 1, 2004
Mexico's human rights problems derive largely from the shortcomings of its criminal justice system. They include the use of torture and other forms of abusive treatment by law enforcement officials, and the failure to hold officials responsible for human rights violations and other criminal activity. President Vicente Fox has repeatedly promised to address these problems. Halfway through his six-year term, Fox remains far from this goal. Yet his two main human rights initiatives—the creation of a special prosecutor's office to investigate past abuses and a cooperative agreement with the United Nations—have opened a window of opportunity for progress.
- Torture and Ill-treatment
- Impunity
- The Special Prosecutor's Office
- Labor Rights
- Freedom of Expression
- Key International Actors
Torture and Ill-treatment
Torture is a common phenomenon within the criminal justice system. Judges routinely accept the use of evidence obtained through violations of detainees' human rights. Judicial oversight of police practices is seriously inadequate. The lenient sentences given to convicted torturers serve to reinforce a climate of impunity with regard to these abuses. Prison inmates are subjected to abuses, including extortion of prisoners by guards and the imposition of solitary confinement for indefinite periods of time. Children in some juvenile detention facilities are forced to live in squalid conditions and reportedly are subject to beatings and sexual abuse. Foreign migrants are especially vulnerable to abusive practices by government agents.
Impunity
The criminal justice system routinely fails to provide justice to victims of violent crime and human rights abuses. A dramatic example is the unsolved murders of hundreds of young women and girls over the last decade in Ciudad Juárez, a city on the U.S. border in Chihuahua state. The causes of failures such as this one tend to be varied and include corruption, inadequate training and resources, and the lack of political will. One problem of particular concern is the fact that the justice system leaves the task of investigating and prosecuting army abuses to military authorities. The military justice system is ill-equipped to investigate and prosecute abuse cases. It lacks the independence necessary to carry out reliable investigations and its operations suffer from a general absence of transparency. The ability of military prosecutors to investigate army abuses is further undermined by fear of the army, which is widespread in many rural communities and inhibits civilian victims and witnesses from providing information to military authorities.
The Special Prosecutor's Office
In 2001, President Fox established a special prosecutor's office to investigate and prosecute past acts of political violence, including massacres of student protesters in 1968 and 1971, and the forced disappearance of hundreds of government opponents during the country's "dirty war" in the 1970s. For two years the office's progress was limited by insufficient cooperation from the military and inadequate access to government documents. But in November 2003, the special prosecutor won a landmark decision from the Mexican Supreme Court holding that statutes of limitations do not apply to old "disappearance" cases as long as the victims' bodies have not been found. Shortly afterward the office obtained its first arrest warrant against a former official for alleged participation in one of these crimes. The warrant was a breakthrough for accountability in Mexico. But just hours after it was issued, the suspect was in hiding and a key witness was found dead with eight bullet wounds and signs of torture, a painful reminder that the prosecution of these crimes would not be easy. The special prosecutor's office has since obtained more arrest warrants, but made no arrests, and continues to push ahead on hundreds of cases.
Labor Rights
Legitimate labor organizing activity is obstructed by collective bargaining agreements negotiated between management and pro-management unions. These agreements often fail to provide worker benefits beyond the minimums mandated by Mexican legislation, and workers sometimes only learn of the agreements when they grow discontented and attempt to organize independent unions. Workers who seek to form independent unions risk losing their jobs.
Freedom of Expression
Mexican laws on defamation are excessively restrictive and tend to undermine freedom of expression. Besides monetary penalties, journalists face criminal prosecution for alleged defamation of public officials. Journalists occasionally have faced violence at the hands of government agents.
Key International Actors
As part of a Technical Cooperation Agreement signed by President Fox, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights maintains an in-country office that, in 2002, produced a comprehensive report documenting ongoing human rights problems and providing detailed recommendations for addressing them. The Fox administration has committed itself to developing a national human rights program based on the report's recommendations.
The United States and Canada are, along with Mexico, signatories to the North American Free Trade Agreement and its labor side accord, which commits them to enforce their laws protecting workers' rights and grants them authority to hold one other accountable for failing to meet these obligations. Under the accord, when a government of one country receives a complaint of violations committed in one of the other two, it can investigate the charges. However, the complaint process is convoluted, and the threat of effective enforcement negligible. As a result, the accord has had little impact on labor rights violations in Mexico.
Related Material
More on Human Rights in Mexico
Country Page
HRW World Report 2004
Report, January 26, 2004