Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

United States
As it had in prior years, the State Department recognized Mexico’s serious human rights problems in 1998 but took no direct steps to nudge Mexico toward improving its human rights record. The State Department was well aware of the serious human rights problems suffered in Mexico. The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in 1997 noted a long list of problems qualifying as “major abuses,” including extrajudicial killings, “disappearances,” torture, illegal arrests, and arbitrary detentions.

The State Department held important meetings with Mexican human rights organizations and carried out human rights fact-finding missions headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Steve Coffey. These efforts sent a pro-human rights message to Mexican government officials and human rights defenders alike. When it came to establishing U.S. policy toward Mexico, however, human rights occupied a place on the bilateral agenda far behind trade, immigration, and drug trafficking. The State Department tread lightly on human rights in Mexico, failing to take public or even private positions on key human rights issues, such as the arbitrary expulsion of U.S. citizens from Mexico. When two U.S. citizens were expelled in April 1998, U.S. officials only raised with their Mexican counterparts concern over whether U.S. embassy personnel had been adequately notified. No concern was raised over the arbitrary expulsion itself.

At the same time, the United States armed forces continued their increasingly active role in training Mexican soldiers and providing assistance to Mexican civilian agencies involved in counternarcotics initiatives. Mexico received more International Military Education and Training (IMET) funding than any other Latin American or Caribbean country during the year, estimated to cost U.S.$1 million for 190 Mexican students in 1998, with a similar amount requested for 1999. Another U.S.$5 million was expected to be spent during 1998 on International Narcotics Control (INC) initiatives in Mexico; U.S.$8 million had been requested for the following year.

In addition, the Pentagon was expected to spend slightly more than U.S.$20 million for Mexico-related training in 1998. This funding—known as Section 1004, after its location in the 1991 Defense Authorization Act—was for counternarcotics initiatives only, including U.S. military training of foreign police forces. Under the program, the United States trained 829 Mexicans. Many of the Mexicans who have participated in this program come from the GAFE, including officers involved in the December 1997 arbitrary detention and torture, in which one civilian died, in Jalisco state, as noted above.

The United States encouraged Mexico’s military to play a larger role in counternarcotics efforts. Missing from much of the United States training of Mexicans, however, was any monitoring capability to ensure that U.S.-trained Mexicans did not engage in human rights violations. Similarly, as the United States encouraged Mexico’s military to become further involved in civilian-related law enforcement activities, the U.S. government did not enunciate a medium- or long-term plan to strengthen civilian institutions so that Mexico’s army would not indefinitely need to play the role it has currently assumed. The United States did not make Mexico’s development of such a plan a condition of U.S. training.

Human rights concerns with U.S. training persisted during the year. United States support of Mexico’s army in these roles may have undermined the civilian institutions that should undergird any democratic society, and although training was ostensibly to fight drug traffic, the distinction between counterinsurgency and counternarcotics in Mexico can, at times, be theoretical at best. Mexico’s Guerrero state, for instance, produces drugs and has a guerrilla presence. Soldiers working on one issue cannot realistically be expected not to engage in the other. The responsibility engendered by U.S. training, funding, and equipping of Mexican officials made promoting and protecting human rights there a necessity, not an option.

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs in Mexico, valued at U.S.$15 million for fiscal year1998 and U.S.$13 million for 1999, included a judicial exchange initiative focused on bringing U.S. and Mexican judges together.

The U.S. Department of Labor continued to focus on Mexico through the application of NAFTA’S labor side agreement. The department’s National Administrative Office (NAO), which is responsible for receiving complaints of labor rights violations in Mexico and Canada, worked on five cases between October 1997 and the time of this writing. Two of the petitions had been submitted jointly by Human Rights Watch, the International Labor Rights Fund, and Mexico’s National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos, ANAD). One, submitted in July 1997, accused the Mexican government of failing to enforce anti-discrimination law by permitting forced pregnancy testing in export-processing factories known as maquiladoras . On October 7 and 8, the U.S. and Mexican labor secretaries met to determine a strategy for handling the issue. ( See Women’s Human Rights section.)

The other jointly submitted case, dating from June 1996, dealt with freedom of association violations suffered by Mexico’s Single Union of Workers of the Fishing Ministry (Sindicato Unico de Trabajadores de la Secretaría de Pesca, SUTSP), bias within Mexico’s federal labor tribunals, and Mexican labor law’s limitation on union organizing within government ministries, a violation of binding international labor law. On April 20, the NAO refused a December 3, 1997, request by the petitioners to reconsider its January 1997 dismissal of the first two issues; petitioners had argued that major portions of their argument had been ignored. In December 1997, the NAO organized a conference at which U.S., Mexican, and Canadian experts discussed the relationship between international and domestic labor standards, in fulfillment of the commitment made in the January 1997 report to examine the relevance of international labor standards to Mexican law. The conference offered no opportunity to resolve the labor rights problems highlighted by the petitioners, and labor rights defenders were not invited to participate on the panels.

As in prior years, the NAO’s work was characterized by an openness to receiving complaints and a desire to broadly seek relevant information, and its public hearings and documentation constituted important opportunities to highlight complex labor rights violations in Mexico. The remedies for labor rights violations available through the NAFTA labor rights process remained weak, however.

United Nations and Organization of American States
The United Nations paid increasing public attention to Mexico during the year, beginning with the U.N. special rapporteur’s report on torture. In June, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson expressed concern about human rights violations in Chiapas and announced that her office stood ready to provide technical assistance if it was requested by the Mexican government. The U.N. secretary-general visited the country in August, during which time the government hinted that it might reverse its initial rejection of the U.N. high commissioner’s involvement in Mexican human rights affairs. In September, the government invited the high commissioner to Mexico, but as of this writing neither the timing nor the agenda for the visit had been determined.

Both the secretary-general and high commissioner for human rights met with Mexican human rights organizations, the former during his trip to Mexico and the latter in Geneva. These meetings served both as a message of support for the human rights community and as an important opportunity for the United Nations officials to receive first-hand information about human rights violations in Mexico.

The U.N.’s Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities issued a resolution on Mexico calling on authorities to protect human rights and requesting the U.N. Human Rights Committee to examine human rights concerns there. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) also considered Mexico during the year and found serious areas of concern.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States, also played an increasingly active role in Mexico. Based on an unprecedented 1996 fact-finding mission to the country, in September 1998 the commission released a comprehensive report on human rights in Mexico, finding that despite reforms designed to improve the human rights situation, serious problems remained, including illegal detentions, torture, violations of women’s rights, and a justice system that inadequately handled human rights issues. The commission also investigated several individual cases of human rights violations in Mexico and urged Mexican authorities to resolve the problems found.