Silencing grievance: Responding to human rights violations in Mexico’s war on drugs

Scholarly studies addressing the issue of human rights abuses in Mexico’s war on drugs could be classified into two groups. A first cluster of literature addresses the deployment of legal dispositions that allow the commission of human rights abuses. A second analyzes the consequences of such political or legal dispositions—for example, the use of torture. However, to increase our understanding of Mexico’s human rights crisis, a third analysis is needed: the study of the official discourse that authorizes such disturbing legal dispositions and its effects. This article is a sociologically-driven analysis of the government responses to human rights abuses between 2007 and 2012. The Calderón administration deployed what can be termed the policing of uncomfortable truths, which served to deny or justify the occurrence of atrocity. The article also suggests the effects such policy had in victims of abuses, perpetrators, and bystanders of atrocity

‘Cheap Merchandise’: Atrocity and Undocumented Migrants in Transit in Mexico’s War on Drugs

Undocumented migrants in transit in Mexico are victims of atrocity. The subject has been largely ignored by scholars, however, until recently when a number of migration experts became interested in the matter. Most observers argue that abuses suffered by migrants are the consequence of the ‘securitization’ of Mexican immigration policy. For them, Mexican authorities perceive migrants from Central America as a threat to national security and have hardened laws and migratory practices as a result, but there is insufficient evidence to support these claims. This article looks at the political economy of undocumented migration in transit in Mexico and the violence associated with it. It investigates the abuses suffered by migrants not as the result of supposed security policies but rather as the consequence of the interplay between local and global economies that generate profits from undocumented migration. The article explores the role played by state officials, cartels and ordinary Mexicans in the migration industry

Policing the past: transitional justice and the special prosecutor’s office in Mexico, 2000-2006

This thesis looks at how Mexico’s new democratic regime led by President Vicente Fox (2000–2006) faced past state crimes perpetrated during the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI’s) seventy-year authoritarian rule (1929–2000). To test the new regime’s democratic viability, Fox’s administration had to settle accounts with the PRI for the abuses the party had perpetrated in the past, but without upsetting it in order to preserve the stability of the new regime. The PRI was still a powerful political force and could challenge Fox’s efforts to democratise the country. Hence, this thesis offers an explanation of the factors that facilitated the emergence of Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process without putting at risk Fox’s relationship with the PRI elite. This thesis is framed by a cluster of literature on transitional justice which follows a social-constructivist approach and it is supported by exhaustive documentary research, which I carried out for six years in public and private archives. This thesis argues that Fox established a Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) as he sought to conduct ‘transitional justice’ through the existing structures of power: laws and institutions (e.g., the General Attorney’s Office) administered by members of the previous regime. So, Fox opted to face past abuses but left the task in the hands of the institutions whose members had carried out the crimes or did nothing to prevent them. The PRI rapidly accepted the establishment of the SPO because the most relevant prosecutorial strategy to come to terms with the PRI was arranged by the PRI’s own elite during the authoritarian era – prosecutorial strategy that led to impunity. In this process, the language of human rights played a decisive role as it framed the SPO’s investigations into the past: it determined the kind of violations that qualified for enquiry and, hence, the type of victims who were counted in the process, which perpetrators would be subject to prosecution, and the authorities that would intervene. Categories of human rights violations (e.g. genocide or forced disappearance) were constructed and manipulated in such a way as to grant a de facto amnesty to perpetrators. Fox was able to preserve the stability of the new regime as his prosecutorial strategies never really threatened the PRI elite

Involved in something (involucrado en algo): denial and stigmatization in Mexico’s “war on drugs”

This article responds empirically to the question posed by Stan Cohen about “why, when faced by knowledge of others’ suffering and pain—particularly the suffering and pain resulting from what are called ‘human rights violations’—does ‘reaction’ so often take the form of denial, avoidance, passivity, indifference, rationalisation or collusion?”. Our context is Mexico's “war on drugs.” Since 2006 this “war” has claimed the lives of around 240,000 Mexican citizens and disappeared around 60,000 others. Perpetrators include organized criminal gangs and state security services. Violence is pervasive and widely reported. Most people are at risk. Our study is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups involving 68 “ordinary Mexicans” living in five different Mexican cities which have varying levels of violence. It investigates participant proximity to the victims and the psychological defense mechanisms they deploy to cope with proximity to the violence. We found that 62 of our participants knew, directly or indirectly, one or more people who had been affected. We also found one dominant rationalization (defense mechanism) for the violence: that the victims were “involved in something” (drugs or organized crime) and therefore “deserved their fate.” This echoes prevailing state discourses about the violence. We argue that the discourse of “involved” is a discourse of denial that plays three prominent roles in a highly violent society in which almost no‐one is immune: it masks state violence, stigmatizes the victims, and sanctions bystander passivity. As such, we show how official and individual denial converge, live, and reproduce, and play a powerful role in the perpetuation of violence

Gobernando el pasado: el proceso de justicia transicional en México, 2001-2006

Se exploran los múltiples factores por los cuales el proceso de justicia transicional en México resultó en impunidad. Se examina el desarrollo histórico del proceso de justicia transicional, desde la creación de la Fiscalía Especial en 2001 hasta su cierre en 2006. La pregunta que guía este artículo es: ¿qué factores permitieron que el proceso de justicia transicional protegiera, y no castigara, a los perpetradores de crímenes del pasado en México

Organizaciones de la sociedad civil y la “securitización” de la migración internacional indocumentada en México

La migración internacional indocumentada en México enfrenta una grave crisis de derechos humanos. Cada año, cientos de miles de personas migrantes, principalmente de Centroamérica, atraviesan México para llegar a Estados Unidos. Su trayecto está caracterizado por extorsiones, secuestros, tortura, desapariciones y muerte. Para activistas y organismos de la sociedad civil, esta crisis se explica por lo que denominan “securitización” de la política migratoria. Por “securitización” entienden una política impuesta a México por Estados Unidos que ve en los migrantes una amenaza a la seguridad. Este artículo reta esta interpretación. El argumento es que la teoría de la securitización es insuficiente para entender los múltiples factores que hacen posible la violación sistemática de los derechos humanos de los migrantes en tránsito

Urgent issues and prospects at the intersection of culture, memory, and witness interviews: Exploring the challenges for research and practice

The pursuit of justice increasingly relies on productive interactions between witnesses and investigators from diverse cultural backgrounds during investigative interviews. To date, the role of cultural context has largely been ignored by researchers in the field of investigative interviewing, despite repeated requests from practitioners and policymakers for evidence-based guidance for the conduct of interviews with people from different cultures. Through examining cultural differences in human memory and communication and considering specific contextual challenges for investigative interviewing through the lens of culture, this review and associated commentaries highlight the scope for considering culture and human diversity in research on, and the practice of, investigative interviewing with victims, witnesses, and other sources. Across 11 commentaries, contributors highlight the importance of considering the role of culture in different investigative interviewing practices (e.g., rapport building, questioning techniques) and contexts (e.g., gender-based violence, asylum seeking, child abuse), address common areas of cultural mismatch between interviewer–interviewee expectations, and identify critical future routes for research. We call for an increased focus in the investigative interviewing literature on the nature and needs of our global community and encourage constructive and collaborative discussion between researchers and practitioners from around the world to better identify specific challenges and work together towards evidence-based solutions