After 71 years of “perfect dictatorship,” Mexico entered the era of modern democracy with the election of President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party – PAN – in 2000. Promising to bring a new era of respect for human rights, government reform, and closer relations to the US, President Fox has raised the hopes, and expectations, of Mexicans. However, after three years of Fox rule that has found it difficult to deliver most of its campaign promises, Mexico has seen the former ruling party – the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI – make significant gains in Congress during the 2003 mid-term elections. Mexico’s political transition is far from over, and the future of the nation still remains up for grabs.

President Fox entered office with an unprecedented, warm relationship with his US counterpart, President George W. Bush. President Bush called Mexico the US’s most important partner in the world, and the two began cooperation on a broad agenda. At the top of the list was a sweeping migration accord that soon fell off the map after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. Since that time, disagreements over war in Iraq have further cooled the relationship. A migration accord seems unlikely at this point in time, though Mexico continues to tout it as its number-one priority. In the meantime, US border control strategies are pushing hundreds of thousands of migrants from Mexico and Central America into dangerous desert areas as they come north to jobs that eagerly await cheap labor. As a result, over 2000 people have died from environmental exposure in the past 6 years.

Internally, Mexico continues to struggle with many of the long-standing human rights problems that President Fox vowed to fix. Mexican police forces in the military continue to commit human rights abuses, including illegal and arbitrary detentions, torture, and extra-judicial execution. Mexico’s judicial system continues to accept confessions signed under torture as evidence, and often fails to properly investigate or prosecute human rights crimes, further perpetuating the acceptance of wrong doing. Though the Fox Administration has spoken in strong and positive terms about human rights, it has yet to follow its words with actions that improve the situation on the ground. All of these problems are illustrated in the case of Ciudad Juarez, where over 300 women have been killed in the past ten years. Despite signs of serial murder, authorities leave most of the murders uninvestigated, have tortured the few people they have detained into confessing to murders, and have even killed lawyers working on the case.

The Latin America Working Group is tackling some of the most pressing human rights problems in Mexico. Along the US – Mexico border, we are working to educate policy makers and the public about our border control strategies and how they contribute to hundreds of deaths a year. We also work to exert public pressure from US policymakers on the Mexican government to insist on proper investigations into the Ciudad Juarez murders. And, continuing our traditional lines of human rights work in Mexico, we denounce human rights violations committed by Mexican authorities, and provide support to our counterparts in Mexico for their work.