For a new approach to transitional justice in Mexico

Abstract

Transitional justice, understood as extraordinary justice processes that a country sets in motion by having moved from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one, is no longer applicable in Mexico. With the deliberate failure of the Special Prosecutor's Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past, created by the first democratically elected president of the Republic in 2000, the potential of subsequent transitional justice instances was also nullified. Moreover, having left unpunished the human rights violations committed in the sixties and seventies of the last century, contributed to the explosion of criminal violence that tears the country apart in the present. Mexico simultaneously suffers the victimization caused by the authoritarian regime of the 20th century and the victimization at the hands of state agents and criminal organizations of the present. Hence the need for a new approach to transitional justice, which sheds light on the atrocities of the past, and also allows us to move from a situation of high victimization to a situation of security and full respect for human rights.