Mexico, Truthcommissions

Although Mexico never officially established a formal truth commission, President Vicente Fox Quesada (2000–2006) in 2002 appointed a special prosecutor to investigate state-sponsored atrocities in the 1960s and 1970s. The government under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which held power from 1929 to 2000, had not attempted to prosecute the perpetrators of government-organized killings and kidnappings because its own party members and officials approved and managed extralegal violence. When Fox, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), became president in 2000, both Mexican and international organizations pressured him to form a truth commission to report on the PRI's past crimes. Instead, Fox made Ignacio Carrillo Prieto special prosecutor, drawing substantial complaints from human rights groups because Carrillo Prieto had worked under the attorney general and therefore was not completely impartial. Still, Carrillo Prieto brought charges of genocide against former president Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970–1976) for approving the massacre of students during the 1968 protests at Tlatelolco, in Mexico City. Trying Echeverría proved difficult because court decisions were reversed several times. Ultimately, a federal court in 2007 suspended the trial. Dissatisfied nongovernmental organizations criticized Carrillo Prieto's work because he indicted only a few individuals besides Echeverría. In 2006 the Mexican government closed the special prosecutor's office and the new president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, did not make past state crimes a priority issue for his administration.

See alsoEcheverría Álvarez, Luis; Fox Quesada, Vicente; Mexico, Political Parties: Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Human Rights Watch. Lost in Transition: Bold Ambitions, Limited Results for Human Rights under Fox. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2006.

Scherer García, Julio, and Carlos Monsiváis. Los patriotas: de Tlatelolco a la guerra sucia. México, D.F.: Aguilar, 2004.

                              Byron Crites