Briefings & Intelligence

15-10-2015: Latin American Weekly Report

  • LatinNews

Mexico’s government faces credibility challenge

Mexico’s federal government will wage a big battle for credibility on several fronts between now and 12 important gubernatorial elections next year. One of these fronts is human rights. This is attracting the most media coverage, not least because the government has invited a succession of high-profile international figures to Mexico to evaluate the country’s progress in this area, only to take issue with their findings. Another key front is corruption in state institutions and law enforcement bodies permitting the escape last July of the drug kingpin, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera, from a maximum security prison. And then there is education. The pugnacious teachers’ union Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) is staging national strikes as part of an attritional struggle to force the government to backtrack on its seminal education reform.

Just days after receiving a painfully candid assessment of its shortcomings in the field of human rights from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the administration led by President Enrique Peña Nieto invited the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, to Mexico. Zeid pulled even fewer punches. As with the president of the IACHR, Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, Zeid cited progress made in specific areas by the Mexican government in addressing human rights failings but he was forthright in his criticism. Zeid, in particular, urged the Mexican government to set a firm deadline for removing the military from the streets and replacing them with well-trained police. He said: “it has to be driven by a sense of real urgency, real urgency. It’s not something that can wait endless months”.

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