Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO: Fox Barely Dents Impunity Surrounding PRI ‘Dirty War&#39

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Oct 2 2006 (IPS) - As the government of President Vicente Fox comes to an end, activists point out that it has failed to bring to justice those responsible for the massacre of hundreds of student protesters on Oct. 2, 1968 in Tlatelolco square in the capital, as well as other atrocities committed in Mexico&#39s "dirty war" against dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s.

Fox, the first president from a party other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in seven decades, had promised to hold accountable those responsible for past human rights violations.

But the president, of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), "ignored his campaign pledges, and at the end of his six-year term, we have been left without justice for the crimes of the past," Alicia Camacho, a torture survivor and spokeswoman for the Culiacán Union of Mothers of the Disappeared, told IPS.

Thousands were tortured and 532 people fell victim to forced disappearance in the brutal crackdown on opponents by the PRI, which governed Mexico from 1929-2000.

The highest profile atrocity was the Tlatelolco square massacre in Mexico City, where soldiers and police opened fire 38 years ago Monday on some 4,000 student demonstrators who were protesting against the government of then president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970).

More than 15,000 bullets were fired into the square that night. The death toll, which included children and innocent bystanders, varies widely. Official documents reported less than 40 deaths, while investigations put the number at more than 130, and human rights groups estimate between 200 and 350.

Although the government at the time said the victims formed part of a "subversive" movement, former president Luis Echeverría (1970-1976), who was minister of the interior at the time of the massacre, admitted in the late 1990s that the students had been unarmed, and suggested that the military action was planned in advance to destroy the leadership of the student movement.

"The events of 1968 are not closed; (the incident) is a wound in the country&#39s history, a wound in the national conscience," presidential spokesman Rubén Aguilar said Monday, describing the massacre as a "watershed in the modern history of Mexico and the beginning of the end of the authoritarian regime."

Social groups and student organisations held marches and other activities in honour of those who were gunned down in Tlatelolco square. The demonstrators&#39 demand echoed the call voiced in previous years: that those responsible for the killings be brought to justice.

In 2001, Fox created a special prosecutor&#39s office charged with investigating the PRI&#39s repression of dissidents and taking legal action against the perpetrators.

However, the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Political and Social Movements of the Past issued less than six arrest warrants, which ended up having little effect due to the legal maneuvering by the attorneys of the accused.

Echeverría, for instance, was briefly put under house arrest in July on charges that he ordered the Tlatelolco square killings as interior minister. But he was released when a judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to try him. Earlier unsuccessful attempts had also been made to bring him to trial.

And in Camacho&#39s case, "All the information, the names, places and dates, was handed over to the special prosecutor&#39s office, but nothing has been done," the activist told IPS in an earlier interview.

Camacho was arrested on Aug. 19, 1977 in her native Sinaloa, a state in northwestern Mexico whose capital is Culiacán. She was taken by the police to an improvised secret jail in a private house, where she was held for two months, blindfolded and subjected to abuse and torture. She was eight months pregnant at the time of her arrest, and gave birth to her son in captivity.

Human rights organisations regret that Fox is reaching the close of his six-year term (which ends Dec. 1) without holding accountable those responsible for the human rights violations of the past.

"Fox&#39s promises were a farce; he fooled us all," said Camacho by telephone Monday from Sinaloa.

According to human rights activist Sergio Aguayo, a professor at the Colegio de México, Fox&#39s efforts to clarify the crimes of the past have been "erratic, ineffective and opaque."

President-elect Felipe Calderón, who also belongs to the PAN, supported Fox&#39s measures in that direction during the campaign, but has not made it clear what he plans to do once he is sworn in.

In other countries, democratic governments have promoted the creation of truth commissions to shed light on periods of state repression. In contrast, Mexico opted for a special prosecutor&#39s office, with the authority to investigate fully and take legal action.

Finance Ministry figures show that the special prosecutor&#39s office has spent some 21.5 million dollars since 2002 to investigate and prosecute past human rights crimes. But it has few results to show, and today is no longer even accessible through the office of the attorney-general&#39s web site.

A report on the dirty war by the special prosecutor&#39s office – which the government made clear was only an unedited draft that was leaked to the press in February – stated that government efforts to fight political, student and insurgent groups in the past "went outside of the legal framework and included crimes against humanity like massacres, forced disappearances, systematic torture, war crimes and genocide."

The report, titled "Que no vuelva a suceder" (roughly "It Must Not Happen Again"), documented dozens of cases of torture, murder and forced disappearance committed by soldiers and other government agents during the administrations of presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970), Echeverría (1970-1976) and José López Portillo (1976-1982).

It concluded that rapes, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial executions formed part of a "state policy" that came from the country&#39s highest-level political officials and military brass, targeting sectors of the population that had organised to demand greater democratic participation in the decisions that affected them and to fight authoritarianism.

&#39&#39The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which . . . led it to commit crimes against humanity, including genocide," it added.

When the report was leaked seven months ago, the Fox administration stated that it did not endorse the document, which it said was unedited. But it added that a final version would be released shortly.

However, with just two months to go before Fox hands over to his successor, there is still no word on the final report.

The clampdown on dissent was the other face of the PRI, which claimed to be revolutionary, supported socialist Cuba, called for a new international economic order and gave asylum to hundreds of people persecuted in the 1970s and 1980s by military dictatorships in South America.

But the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the results of the special prosecutor&#39s office have been "deeply disappointing," because "the office has not obtained a single conviction."

"The Fox administration failed to ensure that the office possessed the credibility, technical expertise, and powers it needed to succeed," added the rights watchdog. "It also failed to ensure active collaboration from other institutions, including the federal investigative police – and, most importantly, the Mexican military, which has refused to cooperate in a serious fashion with the investigation and prosecution of these cases."

"To reinforce and complement efforts to prosecute these cases, the president should promote the creation of a truth commission with the resources, expertise, and independence necessary to advance the investigation begun by the Special Prosecutor&#39s Office," it stated in a report released in May.