Key
Findings
The world
was battered by crises that fueled xenophobic sentiment in democratic
countries, undermined the economies of states dependent on the sale of natural
resources, and led authoritarian regimes to crack down harder on dissent. These
developments contributed to the 10th consecutive year of decline in global
freedom.
The number
of countries showing a decline in freedom for the year—72—was the largest since
the 10-year slide began. Just 43 countries made gains.
Over the
past 10 years, 105 countries have seen a net decline, and only 61 have
experienced a net improvement.
Ratings for
the Middle East and North Africa region were the worst in the world in 2015,
followed closely by Eurasia.
Over the
last decade, the most significant global reversals have been in freedom of
expression and the rule of law.
Mexico
Freedom
Status: Partly Free
Aggregate
Score: 65
Overview:
President Enrique Peña Nieto reached the halfway point of his six-year
term in 2015 facing increasing questions about governmental commitment to good
governance and human rights issues. The Peña Nieto administration began its
term with a promising set of reforms accompanied by slowing homicide rates,
generating optimism about Mexico’s economic and social direction. However,
starting in 2014 the government’s narrative of progress was undermined by
corruption scandals and rights abuses. The problems continued in 2015, with an
increase in homicide rates, the escape of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán
from a high-security federal prison, and ongoing repercussions of the September
2014 disappearance of 43 college students in Iguala, Guerrero, who had engaged
in political protests. Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)–led
coalition maintained its majority following midterm elections in June, but the
elections also signaled party fragmentation and the emergence of independent
candidates as a new political force.
The Iguala disappearances loomed large throughout the year. Judicial
processes continued against scores of local police, drug gang members, and the
mayor of the city and his wife, but as of year’s end no convictions had been
achieved. In September 2015, a group of experts from the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released a report that assailed
investigative and procedural lapses in the government’s investigation and cast
doubt on the government’s November 2014 conclusion that the students’ charred
remains had been burned in a municipal dump. Although the state agreed to
reopen the disappeared students’ case, its response to criticisms by the IACHR
was highly defensive.
The government’s denial of the IACHR experts’ request to interview
soldiers stationed in Iguala kept rights watchers’ eyes trained on the
military, as did the slow pace of judicial proceedings against soldiers in
connection with a June 2014 confrontation between criminals and an army unit in
the State of Mexico that left 22 people dead. The spotlight also shone on the
federal police following two confrontations in Michoacán. The first, in January
2015, left 8 civilians dead, while a raid in May resulted in the deaths of 42
alleged gangsters and a police officer. In October, Human Rights Watch accused
the federal police of committing extrajudicial executions in each incident.
Also that month, the United States announced it was withholding a small portion
of pledged military assistance due to the lack of progress on rights
improvements. Meanwhile, the escape of El Chapo in July embarrassed the
government, and a number of high officials were subsequently fired or arrested
for corruption and incompetence.
The results of the June midterm elections offered the government some
relief, as the ruling PRI continued to hold a majority in the lower house of
Congress (with the help of its close allies the Green Party and the New
Alliance Party). The elections also offered the first signs of potentially
seismic changes in Mexican politics: the left fractured badly, and for the
first time candidates were permitted to run as independents, resulting in the
election of an outsider governor in the important northern state of Nuevo León.
Political Rights and Civil Liberties:
A. Electoral Process:
The president is elected to a six-year term and cannot be reelected. The
bicameral Congress consists of the 128-member Senate and the 500-member Chamber
of Deputies. Senators are elected for six-year terms through a mix of direct
voting and proportional representation, with at least two parties represented
in each state’s delegation. In the Chamber of Deputies, 300 members are elected
through direct representation and 200 through proportional representation, each
for three-year terms. Under a December 2013 electoral reform, current members
of Congress are no longer barred from reelection. As of 2018, elected senators
will be eligible to serve up to two six-year terms; deputies will be permitted
to serve up to four three-year terms. In Mexico’s federal system, the elected
governor and legislature in each of the 31 states have significant governing
responsibility, including oversight of the majority of the country’s
beleaguered police forces.
Peña Nieto won the July 2012 presidential election with 38 percent of the
vote, followed by veteran Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) leader
Andrés Manuel López Obrador with 31 percent. Although López Obrador initially
refused to accept the results, alleging infractions such as widespread vote
buying, overspending, and media bias, the Federal Electoral Tribunal found
insufficient evidence to invalidate the election. In June 2015, the PRI and
allied parties overcame poor government approval ratings to garner a 260-seat
majority in the lower chamber. The right-wing National Action Party (PAN) won
108 seats, while left-wing parties (the PRD, the López Obrador-led National
Regeneration Movement [MORENA], and the Citizens’ Movement) won 120. No
coalition commands a majority in the Senate, where the PRI–Green Party alliance
won 61 seats in 2012, the PAN took 38, and the PRD won 22.
Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE, known until 2014 as the
Federal Electoral Institute) supervises elections and enforces political party
laws, including strict regulations on campaign financing and the content of
political advertising—although control is weaker in practice. Both the 2012 and
2015 elections were generally considered free and fair, but complaints
persisted. The primary accusations in 2012—which concerned alleged instances of
vote buying and collusion between the PRI and dominant broadcaster
Televisa—were instrumental in sparking a significant anti-PRI student movement.
At the state level, allegations of misuse of public resources to favor specific
gubernatorial candidates are frequent. The 2013 political reform broadened the
INE’s power to include oversight of state elections, and the agency was
generally considered to have managed the 2015 balloting competently. However,
political analysts faulted the INE’s unwillingness to adequately punish
violations during the campaign, particularly repeated flouting of electoral
rules by the Green Party.
B. Political Pluralism and Participation:
Mexico’s multiparty system features few official restrictions on political
organization and activity. Power has changed hands twice at the national level
since 2000, and opposition parties are also competitive in many states.
However, in states with lower levels of multiparty contestation, locally
dominant political actors often govern in a highly opaque manner that limits
political activity and citizen participation and opens the door to corruption
and organized crime.
The PRI returned to national government in 2012 after losing two
consecutive presidential races to the right-leaning PAN. The PRI ruled Mexico
without interruption from 1929 to 2000, and many Mexicans still question its
commitment to full democracy. Its ally the Green Party is viewed as a particularly
feckless seeker of control over public funds. The left, which had previously
been dominated by the PRD, fragmented prior to the 2015 midterms, with López
Obrador forming his own party, MORENA. In addition to independent Jaime “El
Bronco” Rodríguez’s victory in Nuevo León, the most prominent independent wins
were one federal deputy and a state legislator in Jalisco.
Politicians and municipal governments have been subject to significant
pressure from criminal groups in recent years, with more than 300 attempted or
successful assassinations of local officials registered between 2008 and 2013.
There were at least 19 killings linked to the 2015 electoral process.
Indigenous Mexicans are not blocked from participating in the political
process, and federal and state laws prescribe procedures for the integration of
traditional community customs. However, indigenous groups remain
underrepresented in formal political institutions.
C. Functioning of Government:
Organized crime and related violence have limited the effective governing
authority of elected officials in some areas of the country. Members of
organized crime have persisted in their attempts to infiltrate local
governments in order to ensure their own impunity. The mass student disappearance
that occurred in Iguala in September 2014 was linked to a deeply corrupt local
government working in conjunction with a drug gang. In the most violent
regions, the provision of public services has become more difficult as
public-sector employees such as teachers increasingly face extortion.
Official corruption remains a serious problem. Billions of dollars in
illegal drug money—as well as large quantities of powerful firearms—enter the
country each year from the United States, and such funds affect politics,
particularly at the state and local levels. Attempts to prosecute officials for
alleged involvement in corrupt or criminal activity have often failed due to
the weakness of the cases brought by the state, prompting an attempt to purge
the federal prosecutorial agency in 2015. Punitive measures have generally
focused on low- and mid-level officials, hundreds of whom have been dismissed
or charged with links to drug traffickers. Pressure for reform intensified
during 2014 after it was revealed that the president’s wife and the finance
minister had purchased houses from an active government contractor in a
conflict-of-interest scandal. In August 2015, all were cleared of wrongdoing
following a widely derided investigation into the so-called mansion scandal.
However, civil society outcry about lack of progress contributed to the April
passage of constitutional amendments creating a new National Anticorruption
System that grants more autonomy to auditors and prosecutors. Mexico was ranked
103 out of 175 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency
International’s 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Despite some limitations, a 2002 freedom of information law has
successfully strengthened transparency at the federal level, though
implementation has slowed and many states lag far behind. A new and more
extensive transparency law passed in April 2015 was mostly praised by good
governance advocates, although controversies over denial of access to files
pertaining to abuses by state security forces persisted.
Civil Liberties:
D. Freedom
of Expression and Belief:
Legal and constitutional guarantees of free speech have been improving
gradually, but the security environment for journalists remains highly
problematic. While some major media outlets have reduced or eliminated their
dependence on the government for advertising and subsidies, investigative
reporting is scarce and the distribution of government advertising still
affects coverage, particularly at the local level. Broadcast media are
dominated by a corporate duopoly composed of Televisa and TV Azteca, which together
control approximately 95 percent of the free-to-air market. Televisa has faced
accusations of supporting specific politicians over the years, usually from the
PRI. A 2013 telecommunications law established a new telecommunications
regulator, strengthened the Federal Economic Competition Commission, and
resulted in the creation of two new free-to-air channels. However, civil
society groups have criticized the limited scope of the reforms, and the
winners of the auctioned airwaves—one of which subsequently was stripped of its
frequency for nonpayment—were not considered likely to offer significant new
competition.
A major controversy emerged in March 2015, when famed investigative
reporter Carmen Aristegui, whose team broke the presidential mansion story, was
fired by MVS Radio. Aristegui accused the station of bowing to political
pressures, while the station’s owners accused her of repeated insubordination.
Reporters probing police issues, drug trafficking, and official corruption
have faced an increasingly high risk of physical harm since 2006, when violence
spiked. At least four journalists were killed in connection with their work
during 2015. Two of the killings occurred in Oaxaca, and one in Veracruz;
another Veracruz-based journalist, Rubén Espinosa, was murdered along with four
other people in Mexico City in July after threats in his home state prompted
him to flee. Given the broader context of impunity and lack of state
protection, the government’s rapid dismissal of a professional motive in the
Espinosa shooting left Mexican journalists indignant. Self-censorship has
increased, with many newspapers in violent areas avoiding publication of
stories concerning organized crime. Press watchdog groups hailed the 2012
federalization of crimes against journalists as well as an August 2015 law in
Mexico City aimed at protecting journalists and human rights defenders, but
they have decried the slow pace of the federal government’s special prosecutor
for crimes against freedom of expression since the office gained authority in
May 2013. Despite improvements in legal status, community radio stations
continue to face occasional harassment from criminals and state authorities.
Mexico has been at the forefront of citizen-led efforts to ensure internet
access. The government amended Article 6 of the constitution in 2013 to make
access to the internet a civil right. However, gangs have targeted bloggers and
online journalists who report on organized crime, issuing threats and
periodically murdering online writers.
Religious freedom is protected by the constitution and is generally
respected in practice. The government does not restrict academic freedom,
though university students are sometimes threatened for their political
activism. While there are no formal impediments to free and open discussion,
fear of criminal monitoring restricts citizens’ willingness to converse
publicly about crime issues in some areas of the country.
E. Associational and Organizational Rights:
Constitutional guarantees regarding free assembly and association are
largely upheld, but political and civic expression is restricted in some
regions. Protest activity slowed in 2015 compared to 2014’s highly-publicized
mobilizations in Guerrero and Mexico City related to the student disappearances.
Although highly active, nongovernmental organizations sometimes face
violent resistance, including threats and murders. Activists representing
indigenous groups contesting large-scale infrastructure projects have been
particularly vulnerable. In 2012, civil society pressure prompted the
government to create a Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and
Journalists, which has offered protection to several hundred people but has
been critiqued by rights groups as slow and suffering from insufficient
governmental commitment.
Trade unions, long a pillar of the PRI, have diminished significantly, but
independent unions still face interference from the government. Informal,
nontransparent negotiations between employers and politically connected union
leaders often result in “protection contracts” that govern employee rights but
are never seen by workers. Several large unions are considered opaque and
antagonistic to necessary policy reforms. Longtime teachers’ union leader Elba
Esther Gordillo—widely perceived as extremely corrupt—was arrested in February
2013 and charged with embezzling more than $150 million; she remained in prison
throughout 2015.
F. Rule of Law:
Mexico’s justice system is plagued by delays, unpredictability, and
corruption, leading to pervasive impunity. A 2008 constitutional reform
replaced the civil-inquisitorial trial system with an oral-adversarial one.
Although it was expected to strengthen due process while increasing efficiency
and impartiality, human rights groups raised concerns about the weak
protections it affords to those suspected of involvement in organized crime.
Implementation of the new system is expected to take eight years; in 2015,
civil society groups noted progress in some states but significant delays in
many others.
Abuses during criminal investigations are rife; in March, a UN special
rapporteur released a report characterizing torture as “generalized” within
Mexican police forces, generating a diplomatic spat. The government has also faced
domestic and international pressure to confront the problem of forced
disappearance, which may have affected up to 24,000 Mexicans, although figures
remain murky. In December, the government submitted a law to end the statute of
limitations for both disappearances and torture and create a system of
registering the disappeared and coordinating the state’s response.
Coordination among Mexico’s many federal, state, and local law enforcement
entities has long been problematic, and the Peña Nieto administration has
pursued streamlined chains of command. In zones plagued by crime, federal
troops have temporarily replaced local police forces. Critics contend that
federal intervention decreases incentives for governors to undertake systemic
reforms, and in practice implementation of such reforms at the local level has
been largely unsuccessful. Despite a 2009 law ordering all members of the
police to be vetted, thousands of police who failed to meet requirements have
remained on the job.
Lower courts—and law enforcement in general—are undermined by widespread
bribery and suffer from limited capacity. According to a government survey
released in September 2015, nearly 93 percent of crimes committed in 2014 went
unreported because the underpaid police are viewed as either inept or in league
with criminals. Even when investigations are conducted, only a handful of
crimes end in convictions. Prisons are violent and overcrowded, and it is not
uncommon for prisoners to continue criminal activity while incarcerated. El
Chapo’s escape led to the arrest of 34 people. The National Human Rights
Commission, long maligned due to its perceived passivity in the face of rampant
rights abuses, began to regain some credibility following the appointment of a
new director in November 2014.
Presidential authority over the armed forces is extensive, but the
military has historically operated beyond public scrutiny. Human rights
advocates have long complained about a lack of accountability for rights abuses
including torture, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial executions.
Military personnel are generally tried in military courts, but a bill passed in
April 2014 shifted the venue of trials for violations of civilians’ rights to
civilian courts. Of the seven soldiers indicted for the 2014 State of Mexico
massacre, four had charges dismissed in October 2015, while three remained in
custody pending trial.
The number of deaths attributed to organized crime rose sharply each year
between 2007 and 2011, declined from 2012 to 2014, but ticked upward again in
2015. Violence was particularly acute in Guerrero, and also rose sharply in
Mexico City. In March and April 2015, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel carried
out a series of attacks that killed more than 20 police in Jalisco. Gang
murders often feature extreme brutality designed to maximize the psychological
impact on civilians, authorities, and rival groups.
In recent years, the government has taken a number of steps to curb
violence and ease popular frustration. These include engaging in consultations
with civic leaders, the continued deployment of troops, the reformation of the
federal police and development of the National Gendarmerie, and the
decriminalization of possession of small quantities of drugs. The Peña Nieto
administration has been less vocal on matters of public safety than its
predecessor, but it has maintained many of the former administration’s
strategies, including use of the military. However, after three straight years
of declines, the murder rate increased by more than 8 percent in 2015.
Mexican law bans discrimination based on ethnic origin, gender, age,
religion, and sexual orientation. Nevertheless, the large indigenous population
has been subject to social and economic discrimination, with many groups
relegated to extreme poverty in rural villages that lack essential services.
Southern states with high concentrations of indigenous residents suffer from
particularly deficient services. Indigenous groups have been harmed by criminal
violence; in recent years, a series of communities in Guerrero and Michoacán
have formed self-defense groups, some of which were subsequently legalized. In
addition, disputes over land issues within indigenous groups have occasionally
become violent, particularly in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca.
G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights:
Criminals have impeded freedom of movement by blocking major roads in
several states in recent years, and ordinary citizens avoid roads in many rural
areas after dark. Rights groups frequently detail the persecution and criminal
predation faced by migrants from Central America, many of whom move through
Mexico to reach the United States. Despite government initiatives to improve
protections, pressure from the United States to crack down on migrants
generated increasing accusations of abuses against migrants in 2015.
Property rights in Mexico are protected by a modern legal framework, but
the weakness of the judicial system, frequent solicitation of bribes by
bureaucrats and officials, and the high incidence of criminal extortion harm
security of property for many individuals and businesses. A series of
demonstrations in March 2015 drew attention to brutal working conditions
endured by many indigenous Mexicans working in northern agricultural fields.
Women play a prominent role in social and political life, and female
representatives increased their share of seats in the Chamber of Deputies to 42
percent in the 2015 elections. However, sexual abuse and domestic violence
against women are common. According to a 2012 study, 46 percent of women have
suffered some form of violence, and perpetrators are rarely punished.
Implementation of a 2007 law designed to protect women from such crimes remains
halting, particularly at the state level, and impunity is the norm for the
killers of hundreds of women each year. In July 2015, authorities in the State
of Mexico issued a “gender alert,” thereby triggering greater scrutiny and an
influx of resources to combat an epidemic of violence against women; women’s
rights advocates expressed hope it would serve as a precedent for other
similarly afflicted regions. Abortion has been a contentious issue in recent
years, with many states reacting to Mexico City’s 2007 liberalization of abortion
laws by strengthening their own criminal bans on the procedure.
Mexico took significant steps toward LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender) equality in 2015, courtesy of the Supreme Court. In June, the
chamber struck down as discriminatory a state law stating that the purpose of
marriage is procreation, and in August, it extended protections to include
adoption of minors by same-sex couples. However, implementing the jurisprudence
in all Mexican states will take time, as the court’s rulings do not apply in
blanket form to all states that have yet to legalize same-sex marriage.
Mexico is a major source, transit, and destination country for trafficking
in persons, including women and children, many of whom are subject to forced
labor and sexual exploitation. Organized criminal gangs are heavily involved in
human trafficking in Mexico and into the United States. Government corruption
is a significant concern as many officials are bribed by or aide traffickers.
FreedomHouse.com. 27/01/16
