2 - Critical Disconnects

Summary

The year 2011 should have been a watershed for Mexican human rights. Mexico’s Supreme Court historically strengthened human rights protections by adopting progressive doctrines grounded in international law, the country modernized its criminal justice system, and civil society united in its calls for justice. Despite these changes, one decade later Mexico finds itself in an unprecedented human rights crisis. How do we understand the spectacular and tragically costly failure of Mexico’s judicial system to strengthen human rights protections and break patterns of impunity over the past decade? The chapter argues that this disconnect stems from two intersecting dynamics: first, the Mexican state’s historically weak, fragmented, federal nature has resulted in the institutionalization of mechanisms that enable impunity, in particular through the work of a powerful and unaccountable Ministerio Público that is able to selectively apply, or defy, the law. Second, socio-legal mobilization has not coalesced around demands for effective implementation of progressive jurisprudence or basic tenets of the rule of law. Instead, human rights litigation proceeds simultaneously on two distinct tracks: strategic litigation of a small number of paradigmatic cases connected to, or in relation with, the inter-American human rights system; and the advocacy and collaborative investigation of cases by small, state-based organizations. The patterns create a critical disconnect, where impunity remains rampant despite Mexico’s embracing of progressive human rights norms and principles.