Relatives of the 43 missing students from the rural teachers’ college march holding pictures of their missing loved ones during a protest in Mexico City. Dec. 26, 2015. AP Photo/Marco Ugarte. All rights reserved

Mexico is facing a deep legitimacy crisis, before which critical
voices are emerging. Trump's arrival across the border should prompt awareness
of the urgent need to face the necessary changes in the country, which will be
holding presidential elections in 2018, amid great uncertainty. The series Mexico at the Crossroads gives a voice
to these critical visions.

The human rights
situation in Mexico has deteriorated remarkably. The war against drugs has had
a critical effect on the increase in violence generated by criminal groups, but
also in crimes committed by state forces. Despite the fact that the Mexican
government, acknowledging this situation, has taken measures to deal with it, the
reality is that human rights violations and the lack of an adequate response by
the judiciary remain the rule rather than the exception.

This is the context
in which, on the night of September, 26, 2014, forty-three students disappeared
from the rural teacher training college Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.
Although this was neither the first nor the last case of disappeared persons in
Mexico, their sheer number, the fact that they were students, the involvement
of state forces at different levels, and the persistence of the victims’ family
members converged to trigger national and international public indignation.

Within the framework of the
precautionary measures being processed by the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights (IACHR), and as a result of the agreement reached between this
institution, the Mexican state, and representatives of the victims, an
Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) was created and commissioned
to carry out a technical check-up of all the actions taken by the Mexican state
after the students’ disappearance, not only regarding their location, but also
the lines of inquiry and the assistance to the victims.

The GIEI was an
unprecedented experience of collaboration between the Mexican state and the IACHR
in monitoring a case in real time. Composed of five international experts, the GIEI
showed that it is possible to investigate this type of atrocity by treating
the victims with due respect and consideration. Its findings on the Ayotzinapa case
– spelled out in two reports – were fundamental but, possibly, its most
important legacy was the X-raying of the Mexican criminal justice system and its
recommendations for improving it.

A perfect complement
to the work done by the GIEI was the report Undeniable
atrocities: confronting crimes against humanity in Mexico, published last
year by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) together with five Mexican
civil society organizations. This report contains an accurate analysis of the
crimes committed in Mexico during the last decade and indicates the existence
of reasonable grounds to think that crimes against humanity have indeed been
committed, both by state and non-state actors, all of which must be duly
investigated and tried.

The report also
includes recommendations for different actors, and puts forward the proposal to
create an international investigation mechanism for heinous crimes and big corruption
cases in Mexico.

The diagnosis is
clear enough: the Mexican judiciary must assume its responsibility for dealing adequately
with the legacy of serious human rights violations committed during the last decade.
If current conditions do not permit it, we need then to think creatively and
not rule out international support – as happened in the case of the Ayotzinapa
students.

The lack of political will could be effectively
confronted by a judiciary determined to seriously face the challenges posed by
the current situation in Mexico. There are many examples of this in Latin
American history. The time has come for Mexico’s judiciary to react.

In order to
contribute to this reflection, and also to help to better understand the
situation of the country in the rest of the continent, the Due Process of Law
Foundation has just published a special edition of its magazine AportesDPLF dedicated to the current human
rights situation in Mexico.

For it is essential to provide elements
of analysis which can contribute to advancing the arguments in favour of rights
and appropriate justice, worthy of a democratic country, now regrettably burdened
by extremely serious levels of violence and impunity, quite unprecedented in
any modern democracy.