New Alliances, Same Dirty War: The Real Cost of the Merida Initiative
DEVELOPMENTS
The governments of the United States and Mexico established the Merida Initiative as a bilateral agreement designed to combat drug-trafficking, initially funding $1.6 billion USD for Mexico and Central America. Established in 2007, the agreement was fundamentally oriented toward supporting a process of militarization that allowed Mexican President Felipe Calderón to carry out a war against drug cartels operating in Mexico. Unfortunately, this alliance against organized crime has come at a high price for basic due process and human rights in Mexico, reinforcing military operations that attack both and respect neither.
The real cost of deploying the Mexican military across the country to carry out anti-drug-trafficking and public security roles is visible in Mexico’s southern states, where the military has been present for forty years. Indigenous and rural communities’ experiences with the Mexican military in these southern states have been grim, including a decade-long Dirty War against any movement to improve their lot, and the new alliance today is regrettably making many of the same mistakes. From excluding civil society at the outset, to being used as a pretense to undermine civilian assemblies and associations, the new Mexico-U.S. alliance is having an enormous impact on Mexican society as the war is carried out in Mexican towns and streets.
As we see a hardening of both governments’ positions, seeking to justify a war that has left more than 30,000 dead in the four years since Calderón took office, innocent persons are falsely accused and human rights defenders are again targeted. While President Obama has made modifications to Merida that inch toward a more nuanced U.S. approach – one that prioritizes cooperation with Mexican civilian institutions – the U.S.-Mexico partnership is today far from improving either security or due process in Mexico.
BACKGROUND
In the impoverished regions of Mexico, – where the highest concentrations of indigenous communities are located – this war expands into community spaces and communal territories, because the Mexican military seeks both territorial control and a population subjugated by force. As military bases are installed within rural communities’ agrarian centers, check-points are established to limit freedom of movement, searching cars and interrogating passengers, taking down license plates and personal identification information. Soldiers assume the role of local police, with the power to interrogate and detain whomever they deem as suspicious. With the sheer power of their arms and their presence, they terrify local communities, often taking detainees into military compounds where s/he can be interrogated and often tortured to obtain the information that corroborates their suspicions. Persons are held completely incommunicado and families are denied any information, as military personnel are rarely willing to establish a dialogue with victims’ families.
In this context, legal due process is pushed aside and it is only military authority that determines the legal status of detainees. In these new operations that lack any civilian oversight, there have been cases of extrajudicial executions; the military justifies these by saying that persons killed had failed to follow instructions, or had tried to escape. This harkens back to the Dirty War carried out in the 1960’s and ‘70’s in Mexico, ostensibly against guerrillas and communist cells. For the indigenous and rural communities that were brutalized then, today’s military deployment reflects the impunity that accompanies the expanded role of the military in civilian life. The still-unresolved cases of 600 persons disappeared by the military during the Dirty War are 600 arguments against the effectiveness of military justice to prevent abuses.
Today, there are again more cases of disappeared persons; but there are also more blatant cases that also go unresolved. The case of a young man named Bonfilio, an indigenous Naua traveling to Mexico City, illustrates the often arbitrary actions of members of the Mexican military. At a military check-point, Bonfilio’s bus was ordered to stop and passengers ordered to exit for a routine search; one passenger was pulled aside because he wore military boots. After an altercation with the driver, – (who protested the detention) – the bus returned to the main road; instantly, the soldiers at the check-point opened fire on the rear of the bus, hitting Bonfilio in the back of the neck, and killing him instantly. The soldiers caught up to the bus, detained the driver and then argued that they had found illicit narcotics in the bus. Soon thereafter, a request was made to ensure that the case was moved from common civil jurisdiction to the military prosecutor’s office.
The case of Bonfilio reflects the tragedy in which Mexican men and women are living today; and it is one of countless cases of military abuses that go unchecked, uninvestigated and unresolved. In such an environment, impunity thrives – families fear reporting crimes, indigenous women fear denouncing abuses, and human rights defenders must risk their lives to accompany a victim. The deaths caused by this violence – beyond the direct impact to the security of family and personhood – have caused serious damage to the social fabric: life itself has ceased to be of sacred value.
This tragedy is the untold and inhumane side of the “official” image of an alliance against narco-trafficking, that omits the very systematic abuses committed against the civilian population. It is in this context that Mexican authorities have abdicated their responsibility to ensure the safegaurd of basic protections such as due process and remedies at law, investigation and prosecution for abuses – those that ensure the respect and protection of fundamental human rights. And it is in this context that the Merida Initiative, and U.S. military assistance generally, has provided a blank check to the Mexican military.
ANALYSIS
As the Mexican administration has chosen to deploy its military without any meaningful civilian oversight and controls, U.S. assistance has served to reinforce a new Dirty War against Mexico civil society, and in particular indigenous and rural human rights defenders that seek to accompany their communities in their search for justice. Human rights defenders in the U.S. and in Mexico will continue to demand respect for the lives in those communities directly impacted by the militarization, and we must stand with them.
No bilateral initiative will be effective without meaningful participation and ownership by civil society; and no global alliance will be acceptable if it ignores fundamental human rights. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments must ensure compliance with universally recognized standards for human rights, which in turn support a strong and fair rule of law and legal process. The Calderón administration must comply with its international commitments in the field of human rights – from the five decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on limiting military jurisdiction, to the four requirements agreed to under the Merida Initiative.
Abel Barrera Hernández is Founder and Director of Tlachinollan: Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña, in the Mountain region of Guerrero, Mexico, and 2010 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Laureate.
Salvador G. Sarmiento is Advocacy Officer at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors.