Mexico Is Still Waiting for Human Rights Probe

So whatever happened to President Vicente Fox’s promise to investigate the human rights violations of Mexico’s past?

Eight months into his presidency, Fox has avoided taking a stand on the divisive issue of forming a truth commission or finding some other way to uncover the facts about past massacres, torture and disappearances.

Among those who would like to know are family members affected by the more than 500 cases of political disappearances documented by human rights groups. Most of the abuses from the 1970s to the mid-1990s are alleged to have been carried out by police, soldiers and security agents of the former government against suspected leftist guerrillas.

Priscila Chavez Hoyos, for one, wants to know what happened to her brother Juan, a student activist who she says was snatched in 1978 by a clandestine police unit known as the White Brigade. Chavez told a recent rights forum that her brother was last seen in a military prison in 1980 with signs of severe torture.

Human rights groups are angrily pressing Fox on the issue, but persistent divisions in his Cabinet appear to have paralyzed the president in what some regard as a litmus test of his government. After all, Fox has made the campaign against impunity a cornerstone of his administration.

But others argue that he should worry less about the past than about current and future challenges. According to this view, shared by some in his own center-right National Action Party, or PAN, opening old wounds would alienate members of the former ruling party that Fox defeated--and whose support he needs for key reforms.

At the moment, Fox has the worst of both worlds: He hasn’t delivered on his campaign promise to learn the truth, and he hasn’t cashed in the potential political bonus of forgoing a probe of past wrongs.

Momentum for a truth commission took hold during Fox’s successful campaign to end the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. His victory raised expectations that he would investigate at least the most serious human rights violations of the past, such as the massacre of hundreds of students in Mexico City on Oct. 2, 1968.

In his inauguration speech, Fox declared: “I propose to open what has remained closed in sensitive episodes of our recent history and investigate that which has not been resolved, through a body that attends to the demands for truth by the majority of Mexicans.”

At the same time, the president said he would avoid any witch hunts against old foes, saying his handling of the past would “not be inspired by any resentment, vengeance, desire for personal reprisals or aspirations to reinterpret history.”

He has been largely silent on the issue since.

Asked to clarify Fox’s position on the truth commission, a presidential spokesman provided a transcript of a June 27 interview in which Fox said: “We are studying that possibility. We have not made a decision, and we want to consult many people, reach a broad consensus. . . . Therefore, in principle, our priority view is fixed on building the future and not in getting lost in the past. Nonetheless, it seems to me there are things that need to be clarified, and we are studying how to do so.”

Fox’s leftist foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, said in May that a “settling of accounts” would be a necessary step toward justice and reconciliation with the past. But he stressed the need to carefully weigh the actual political circumstances in deciding which means to use.

Other Cabinet members, including National Security Advisor Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, are known to want a truth commission or similar mechanism.

But Interior Minister Santiago Creel, a leading figure in Fox’s party, spoke forcefully against a truth commission in late July during a meeting with leaders of the former ruling party to try to restore a political dialogue.

The PRI remains the largest party in Congress, and Fox needs its vote to get his ambitious reform program adopted. He has struggled to build a working relationship with the PRI, whose members would be the principal target of a truth commission.

Asked by PRI officials whether a truth commission lies ahead, Creel said that any past wrongdoing should be addressed “through the route of [existing] institutions. . . . The institutional solution, without doubt, is always the best solution. There can be others, yes, [but they are] extremely risky, because we know when they start but not where they will finish.”

Creel’s remarks were widely interpreted to mean that Fox would come down on the side of pursuing any inquiries through existing government channels rather than a truth commission.

But Creel’s spokesman, Hector Villareal, said the debate is more one of procedure, adding that Congress will have ultimate responsibility for formulating an investigative body.

Despite their intense interest in finding answers and their anger over the delays, rights groups themselves are divided on how Mexico should tackle an issue that has been contentious in transition governments around the world, from Chile to South Africa.

Rosario Ibarra, the feisty leader of a group representing 542 families of those who disappeared between the late 1960s and the 1990s, opposes a truth commission. She says the government would use such a panel as a trick to vaguely accuse the military and police of past abuses and then let officials avoid prosecution.

Instead, Ibarra said, Fox should publicly order the attorney general to prosecute every one of the outstanding cases, using files of government intelligence archives and other newly available sources.

Ibarra’s son Jesus, a leftist guerrilla, was abducted in 1975 and never seen again.

She said her group has been asking to meet with Fox since soon after his inauguration. She said he hasn’t found time to meet with her group, even though he recently invited a soccer team to the presidential complex, Los Pinos.

The head of the National Human Rights Commission, Jose Luis Soberanes, has suggested that an independent special prosecutor be appointed. He says a truth commission would have no teeth and couldn’t compel alleged rights abusers to testify. The rights commission was created by the previous government and has little credibility among activists.

But other rights groups, including a rival organization of family members of the disappeared, demand a truth panel as an essential tool to force the authorities to act. And many think Fox is wasting valuable time.

“The very institutions that they want to use to investigate the disappearances are the ones that carried out the killings and disappearances in the first place,” said Julio Mata, a member of another group of families of the disappeared.

Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of Human Rights Watch/Americas, said a truth commission need not be incompatible with prosecutions of the guilty--and in fact could generate momentum for such accountability.

“A truth commission normally reveals the will of a democratic government in transition to go to the roots of human rights abuses that were committed in the past with full impunity, and with complicity from the state,” Vivanco said. “It normally is an incredibly powerful process that gives the necessary confidence and political space for the justice sector to operate independently.

“So I think it is a very important test,” he added. “The time has come for President Fox to clearly define a policy in favor of full accountability. Otherwise, it will be a signal of abdication that will obviously undermine the credibility of the government.”

At a recent congressional forum organized by the left-of-center Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, family members of the disappeared, the tortured and the slain demanded government action.

Several who spoke were unrepentant leftist revolutionaries who had once fought to overthrow the government. The mini-insurrections of the 1970s and ‘80s, while never a military threat, provoked a harsh crackdown that activists call Mexico’s “dirty war.”

Guillermo Reyes recalled that his brother Roque was radicalized by the unrest of 1968 and was jailed from 1971 until early 1977. Out of jail, he returned to his revolutionary activities and was subjected to intense surveillance. He left a political meeting Sept. 11, 1977, and was never seen again.

Some disappearances were as recent as five years ago. Family members believe that those victims are still alive.

With her three children playing nearby, Norma Lorena Santos said police watched her husband, Gregorio Alvarado Lopez, a teacher and Indian rights activist in the poverty-stricken state of Guerrero, for eight months before his disappearance in September 1996. She said she was told a month later that police had detained him in Chilpancingo, the state capital. She never saw him again.

“From that moment, we have lived in a genuine calvary,” she said. “I just want to find my husband. . . . We want our country not to lose its memory.”