Mexico’s security and human rights crisis continues

Mexico City, Aug. 31 (EFE). – Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will present his fifth government report on Sept. 1, showing a decrease in homicides but an ongoing crisis of drug violence and unsatisfactory results in relation to his promises to protect human rights.

“Not only has he changed the narrative of what he would do in terms of human rights between the campaign and his first years in office, but everything he offered during the campaign has been forgotten,” said Jose Antonio Guevara, a human rights specialist and academic, in an interview with EFE.

Rosa Icela Rodriguez, head of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, announced on August 22 that intentional homicides continue to decrease, pointing out that the monthly incidence of this crime has fallen by 19.9% in the last six years.

The National Institute of Statistics and Geography counted 32,223 murders in 2022, a 9.74% decrease compared to the 35,700 murders registered in 2021.

However, in 2022, with 13 cases, Mexico became the most dangerous “country at peace” for journalists, concentrating 20% of the reporters murdered worldwide, according to Reporters Without Borders.

There are also more than 111,000 missing or unaccounted for persons, and according to research by grassroots organizations, 52,000 human remains remain unidentified in public offices.

Guevara said that in addition to the actual numbers, there is a weakening of public institutions and he believes that the reforms promoted by the president have caused “setbacks.”

MILITARIZATION AND IMPUNITY

The human rights expert pointed out that there has been a militarization of the country with the creation of the National Guard, a security corps that has increasingly taken over public security functions.

Maria Luisa Aguilar, Coordinator of the International Area of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, argued that “The security model is not working.”

Both agreed that one of the main obstacles to better security and the protection of human rights in Mexico is impunity, which, according to the organization Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity), is more than 93%.

The only way to solve this problem, they agreed, is to make a major change in the Attorney General’s Office, headed by Alejandro Gertz, whose resignation has been called for several times by various civil society actors. But Gertz has the support of Lopez Obrador.

With the presidential elections coming up in June 2024, the reorganization of this institution should be a priority for the candidates, said Guevara.

“The new head of the executive branch will have to ensure that the Attorney General’s Office serves the purpose for which it was created, and for that to happen, he/she will have to ensure that it is a prosecutor who really honors his/her functions and is not a puppet again,” he argued.

THE CHALLENGE OF INSTITUTIONALIZATION

In light of this panorama, both experts said that whoever is elected as head of the executive branch will face the daunting task of rebuilding a country that, contrary to the current president’s campaign promises, has not prioritized guaranteeing security or the fulfillment of human rights.

“We will have to rebuild much of what this government has destroyed in its deliberate policy of weakening institutional counterweights,” Guevara concluded. EFE