Light From the South

Here’s a sign of the times that is at once sobering and comforting: At a moment when the U.S. government is pulling down the shades on its inner workings--arguing, for instance, that the public should be shut out if terrorism suspects are put on trial--our once secretive southern neighbor is boldly shedding light on its actions.

Never in Mexico’s troubled history had one of its presidents acknowledged that government agencies and officials participated in the torture, disappearance or execution of citizens. President Vicente Fox has just changed that. The National Human Rights Commission has documented 275 cases of Mexican security forces illegally detaining, torturing and, in several cases, executing citizens during the government’s clandestine war against leftist insurgents in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Bucking Mexican leaders’ tradition of pretending that such abuses didn’t happen, Fox on Tuesday accepted the report at a solemn ceremony in an infamous old prison that has been turned into a national archive. Accompanying Fox were his attorney general, defense minister and interior minister. Their presence was not coincidental, for the commission implicated those agencies’ police, security agents and soldiers in the abuses.

The report makes it clear that the guerrilla groups active in Mexico in the 1970s and ‘80s used violent means to try to overthrow the government. They too robbed, kidnapped and murdered to advance their agendas.

Yet, as the rights commission president said in presenting the report, national security alone was not enough to justify the extremes of force and brutality that past governments used to repress opponents.

After formally accepting the report, Fox announced he will name a special prosecutor to follow up in the investigation and to try suspects in the atrocities. That’s good but not enough. Past special prosecutors in Mexico have failed miserably. One even planted a body in the yard of the home of the accused.

Fox must make sure that the prosecutor’s office is honest, independent, fully staffed and funded. If he is to build trust, the results must appear soon, while he’s still in office. Then Fox must make sure that the process he has begun--shining light into the darkness of government abuse--continues as a key part of his legacy.

We hope he succeeds, and also hope that 10 years from now the United States doesn’t have to look south for a lesson in open government.