REP•RTAGE Kate Doyle is a senior analyst and the director of the Mexico Project at the National Security Archive, Washington, D.C. She lives in Mexico City.

“Forgetting Is Not Justice” Mexico Bares Its Secret Past Kate Doyle

In the heart of Mexico City, there is an old Mora, head of the state intelligence service panopticon prison. A guard tower once rose CISEN (Centro de Investigación y Seguridad at its center, surrounded by cells. Like all Nacional)—the president announced the panopticons, it was a structure designed to opening of tens of thousands of formerly se- permit total surveillance and control of the cret records about state-sponsored terror prison population by the state: simply by from the 1960s to the 1980s. The collection pacing the tower’s small circular room, a was the result of an executive order issued guard could watch any prisoner, day or by Fox seven months earlier demanding that night, moving about in his exposed cage. the secretariats of the interior (Gobernación) This was Lecumberri—the “Black and defense (Secretaría de la Defensa Na- Palace”—built at the end of the nineteenth cional, or SEDENA) turn over to the archive century, where from the 1950s through the all records in their possession on what is be- mid-1970s, Mexico held its political prison- ing called, for the first time in Mexico, the ers. The inmates most recently here were “dirty war.” not only members of the guerrilla, but the In a speech delivered before members of students, academics, dissident political lead- the press and archive staff, Fox told his au- ers, and labor organizers who dared to oper- dience that the 60,000 newly opened files ate outside the tight strictures for dissent would contribute to more than just the re- established by the government in those construction of history; they would be used years. as evidence in building criminal cases Today, Lecumberri is no longer a prison. against individuals responsible for violating The building was decommissioned, its tow- political and human rights. “No society can er removed, and in 1982 it was converted tolerate excesses and wrongs committed into the Archivo General de la Nación against human rights,” the president de- (AGN), Mexico’s national archives, where clared. “For this reason, we are prepared to millions of pages of the country’s docu- accept the ultimate consequences of the clar- mentary heritage are stored for public use. ification of these deeds.” Prison cells have become record repositories; The first researchers arrived the next the corridors between them are the galleries morning; a few more trickle in every day. in which researchers now sit and pore over They are historians, human rights activists, their nation’s history. journalists, families of the disappeared—and On June 18, 2002, President Vicente former inmates of the Lecumberri prison. Fox Quesada convened an extraordinary And that is how it happened that citizens public ceremony in the courtyard of Lecum- who were once the subjects of surveillance berri. Accompanied by senior members of by the Mexican state now gather in the old his government—including Interior Secre- panopticon to scrutinize the state itself. tary Santiago Creel, Attorney General Rafael Ever since Fox’s electoral victory, talk of Macedo de la Concha, and Eduardo Medina exposing the crimes of the ancien régime has

“Forgetting Is Not Justice” 61 become a national pastime. How best to de- ter and legalized the Mexican Communist stroy the legacy of impunity and democratic Party. It was a bid for legitimacy—the PRI dysfunction left by the Institutional Revolu- had looked distinctly undemocratic during tionary Party (PRI) than to reveal specific in- the 1976 presidential election, when its can- stances of corruption, nepotism, and repres- didate was forced to run unopposed by the sion committed by previous governments? failure of the only other remotely viable par- Indeed, initial forays confirm that the ty, the National Action Party (PAN), to enter archive opens a revealing paper trail through the race. López Portillo sought to preserve the Mexican past, from the killing of dozens his party’s hegemony and fend off its critics of student demonstrators on the eve of the by pulling new competitors into the politi- 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, cal process. through the government’s brutal assault on He also hoped to co-opt an angry and the left in the 1970s and 1980s—the hid- articulate leftist movement that accused the den history behind the political transition PRI of betraying its revolutionary roots and that finally led to the election of Vicente demanded radical change unacceptable to Fox in July 2000. those in power. The regime’s savage re- The president himself raised public ex- sponse to what began as a series of student pectations during his campaign, with prom- protests in 1968 had spawned tiny but vio- ises to promote a new accountability and lent armed opposition groups in the coun- unearth the truth about the past. Due to a try’s poorest rural states—Guerrero and recalcitrant Congress and Fox’s own lack of Oaxaca, among others—and urban terrorism political skills, his administration has so far in some of the larger cities. A military coun- failed to carry out most of the fiscal and bu- terinsurgency campaign wiped out most of reaucratic reforms it seeks, the privatization the extreme left by the mid-1970s. In 1976, schemes, and the prosecution of powerful outgoing President Luis Echeverría Alvarez members of the elite for corruption. Fox has created a clandestine security unit called the been more successful in challenging the en- White Brigade to deal with the rest, which trenched secrecy and history of violence it did with all due efficiency—mostly by wrought by decades of one-party rule. In ad- torturing and killing them. López Portillo, dition to compelling the disclosure of secret who supported the hard line secretly, pub- files on the dirty war, the Fox government licly took the edge off with an amnesty de- has appointed a special prosecutor to inves- cree and the invitation for broader political tigate past human rights crimes, encouraged participation. international scrutiny of Mexico’s human More reforms would follow, but it was rights record, freed most of the country’s the economic crisis of the 1980s that finally known political prisoners, and supported mobilized elites, disillusioned with the PRI, the passage of a groundbreaking freedom of to join the political fray. Business groups information law. and the conservative middle class in the The road Mexico took to reach this mo- north saw the historically rightist PAN as a ment was a long and bumpy one. Vicente vehicle for change, at least in local and state Fox’s election in July 2000—when Mexican elections. Presidential politics were still voters chose their first president from out- dominated, as they had been for decades, by side the PRI in over 70 years—represented the dedazo (“finger tap”), whereby presidents not so much a coup as the culmination of 25 secretly handpicked their successors who years of incremental democratic change. The were then “elected” in public relations exer- process began in earnest in 1977, when cises masquerading as popular votes. But in President José López Portillo opened the po- 1987, a dissident branch of the PRI broke litical arena to permit new parties to regis- away from the party to form the National

62 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2003 Democratic Front (FDN), led by Cuauhté- While controversy over suspected fraud moc Cárdenas, son of former president Lá- had erupted during the 1980s over votes in zaro Cárdenas. In 1988, Cárdenas ran for Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, and Sonora, inde- president. pendent pro-democracy movements now Leading up to the election, the PRI had emerged across the country, organizing the been losing ground by inches at the munici- first-ever election observations in San Luis pal level, but the broader party project to Potosí in 1991 and Michoacán in 1992. In maintain its grip on power was still intact. 1994, democracy activists joined forces with The regime relied on its old formula for suc- scholars and human rights groups to create cess—a very big tent, which could accom- the Civic Alliance, a coordinating body for modate multiple political tendencies under hundreds of national and regional non- one roof; when it came the opposition, most governmental groups dedicated to forcing of it could be coaxed into compliance by po- open Mexico’s sealed political system. litical favor, coercion or cash. By the time No one was prepared for the shock of the vote was held that summer, however, 1994, the annus horribilus that shattered the Cárdenas surprised everyone with the huge veneer of stability and progress the regime margin of support he was able to muster, still managed to provide. New Year’s Day and the government was forced to scramble dawned with the uprising of the Zapatista to prevent his victory. When the computer- National Liberation Army (EZLN), timed fe- ized count began showing Cárdenas with a licitously to coincide with the launching of significant lead over his opponents, the the North American Free Trade Agreement PRI’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Manuel (NAFTA), Salinas’s most cherished achieve- Clouthier of the PAN, public access to the re- ment. It didn’t look like other Latin Ameri- sults was suddenly cut off due to “computer can guerrilla wars: masked Mayan rebels, failure.” The dimensions of the fraud re- adept at using the press to their advantage, vealed themselves in the days that followed: were demanding economic justice, an end to the press reported tens of thousands of pro- discrimination, and democracy. Then came a FDN ballots found burnt and discarded, tally second jolt—on March 23, PRI candidate sheets altered. Despite independent data in- Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated at a dicating that Cárdenas was the victor, the public rally, deepening the country’s tension official results showed Carlos Salinas win- and forcing Salinas to tap Colosio’s cam- ning by a razor-thin margin, with just over paign manager, economist Ernesto Zedillo, 50 percent of the vote. for the party’s nomination. When the elec- The regime’s blatant manipulation fol- tion got underway in August, the Civic Al- lowed upon years of thwarted expectations liance blanketed the country with tens of and dashed hopes. Mexicans were used to thousands of observers and exposed innu- fraudulent elections, but 1988 was stagger- merable instances of local fraud, declaring ing to even the most hardened observers. the race illegitimate overall due to the over- The day after the results were announced, whelming resources available to the ruling the newspaper El Financiero’s headline trum- party. In December, to usher in the first peted what would have once been unprint- month of Zedillo’s new government, the able: “NADA PARA NADIE” (“Nothing for any- Mexican peso went into a frightening one”). Defiance was in the air. Cárdenas fi- freefall, profoundly damaging the economy nalized his break with the PRI by founding and abruptly ending Salinas’s reputation as the Party of the Democratic Revolution a visionary. (PRD) in 1989; that same year, in Baja Cali- A product of the party machine, Zedillo fornia, the PAN became the first opposi- turned out to be the right man at the right tion party to win a gubernatorial election. moment. In his inauguration speech, he

“Forgetting Is Not Justice” 63 announced his intention to bring the rule two inherently closed and conservative cul- of law to Mexico, and quickly took several tures—indigenous theocracy and the Span- steps that surprised a populace inured to ish crown. Neither brought anything resem- empty promises and inaction. In an un- bling democratic tradition to the marriage. precedented move, he named a member of Today, secrecy knows no limits. The av- the PAN to be his attorney general. He or- erage citizen in Mexico has little access to dered the resignation of all 26 justices of information about even the most fundamen- the Supreme Court, an institution widely tal aspects of his or her life. The street in considered corrupt and beholden to the front of one’s building has been ripped up PRI, and replaced them by constitutional by municipal workers, who have since dis- amendment with 11 new ones. In 1996, appeared: When might one expect them to he overhauled the Federal Electoral Insti- return to fix it? A couple’s first child is tute, making it for the first time indepen- reaching school age: Can they see govern- dent of government influence. Campaign ment statistics rating the local public finance laws were revised in an attempt to schools? Funds were earmarked for a water curb excessive spending and to level the treatment system three years ago, but there playing field among parties. The results of is still no water treatment system: What these changes were evident in the elections happened to the money? To these and of 1997, the most competitive ever held: countless other questions one might be the PRI lost control of the legislature for tempted to ask, there is an infuriating re- the first time in its history, and the PRD’s sponse that every Mexican has heard a thou- Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas became the first sand times: “No sabría decirle” (“I wouldn’t elected mayor of Mexico City. know what to tell you”). The road eventually wound its way to Last October, one of the country’s lead- Vicente Fox’s door, the former Coca Cola ex- ing national newspapers, Reforma, orches- ecutive and one-time governor of his home trated a test of the right to information, state, Guanajuato. But as Fox looks out with devastating results. The paper enlisted from the presidential mansion at Los Pinos, 340 citizens from 34 municipalities across he faces a vastly different landscape than did the country to submit individual requests his predecessors. The years of gradualist po- for information at their local government of- litical transition helped sow the seeds for a fices. Participants sought copies of a variety participatory citizenship that went beyond of public records, including a permit for an marking a box next to a candidate’s name open-air market to operate, a labor contract, and believing it would make a difference. the monthly bill for a mayor’s business cell The Civic Alliance was an early expression phone, and the insurance policy covering a of a growing and ever more outspoken cri- government vehicle. tique of Mexico’s lack of democracy; today, Only 40 of the requests actually resulted electoral activism continues, but it has been in documents; the remaining 300 were met joined by democracy advocates who seek with flat denials, mockery, sarcasm, and a more profound opening of the system even threats, according to the survey. In the through real accountability, government Cuauhtémoc Delegation in Mexico City, transparency, and respect for human rights. where I live, one official told a participant that he would not even bother accepting Secrecy’s Deep Roots the request. “I am going to avoid the trou- One of the most enduring legacies of au- ble of receiving this letter, stamping it and thoritarianism in Mexico is secrecy. Secrecy putting the delegation seal on it, because here has very deep roots indeed, reaching [if I take it] I am just going to tear it up back half a millennium to the wedding of and throw it in the wastebasket.”

64 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2003 The good news is that the people have mation will be guaranteed by the State.” struck back. Six months after Fox’s Decem- The political will of the state, however, ber 2000 inauguration, a group of more did not match the aspirations of the amend- than 80 reporters and editors, academics, ment, and nothing came of it. When I asked lawyers, and public interest organizations a historian why the news media—which had met in Oaxaca City to launch a campaign so much to gain—failed to rally around the for the right to information. The coalition, cause, she told me the press had deep mis- which became known as the Grupo Oaxaca, givings about the meaning of the amend- elected a working group to draft a “trans- ment’s language. Although it appeared to parency law” that they then brought to imply that citizens would have access to Congress in search of sponsors. It was an information, she pointed out, the word unusual step; unlike the United States, “guarantee” could also be interpreted to Mexico has no tradition of citizen lobbying, mean that the state could now use Article and most laws passed by Congress in the 6 to “vigilar”—that is, to monitor, track— days of PRI rule emanated from the executive the way the press used information it ob- branch and were approved unanimously. tained from the state: the state as informa- Responding to public pressure, the Fox tion police. administration also sent a draft freedom of Suspicions about the new freedom of information law to Congress. But not only information law linger. Many of the non- had the Grupo Oaxaca already written its governmental groups that could benefit own initiative, when it came time to resolve the most from a legal tool that could help the differences between its proposal and the them obtain official data about the issues president’s, senior members of the coalition that engage them—environmental groups, participated in the negotiations—an ex- health advocates, indigenous rights organi- traordinary precedent in a country that is zations, human rights workers—played no accustomed to keeping its citizens as far role in the national debate over the law, away as possible from the machinery of leaving the press to do all the talking. As power. The new federal transparency act a result, even as they celebrate their new passed both chambers unanimously, and on right, citizens are unsure what it means June 10, 2002, President Fox signed it into and skeptical as to its real impact. Yet law. By the time this article goes to print, these are the very constituencies that most the law will have gone fully into effect— need to use the law now, and ensure its on June 12 of this year. effectiveness. The challenge now becomes to imple- The people’s apathy about their new ment it, of course. Militating against its right is the product of bitter experience: the success is the intransigence of a closed bu- regime knew well the power of information reaucracy, the apathy of a passive citizenry, and jealously guarded its advantage. Years and the natural pessimism of the elites who ago, Mexican novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II are in the best position to support and pro- described in The Nation what Cuauhtémoc mote the law: journalists, intellectuals, and Cárdenas—just elected mayor of Mexico activists. City—found when he and his staff entered There is some history here. There was their offices for the first time in 1997. The an earlier campaign to assert the people’s buildings had been stripped to the bones by right to information during the era of polit- outgoing PRI bureaucrats: computers stolen, ical reform under President José López Por- hard drives wiped clean, file cabinets emp- tillo. That effort resulted, in 1977, with tied, bare wires where television sets used the addition of one line to Article 6 of the to be. Taibo: “I arrive at a downtown office Mexican Constitution: “The right to infor- and the manager shows me his desk. Can

“Forgetting Is Not Justice” 65 you believe it? he says. They not only took 90 percent of the respondents said they did what was in the drawers. They took the not know anything about the “right to in- fucking drawers as well!” formation.” Evidence of the momentum in favor of transparency today is everywhere—even at Collusion and Self-Censorship my local supermarket. Taped onto its plate “Mexico is in the middle of a very, very slow glass windows for a while was a government transition,” the scholar Sergio Aguayo says. poster featuring a woman with a puzzled “Maybe it is the slowest transition on record expression looking at a file cabinet over- of an authoritarian system to a democracy. flowing with paper. On the bottom of the Without a doubt, there is a trend toward poster, an encouraging: “YOU HAVE THE more openness. But the change is so incre- RIGHT TO KNOW!” along with information mental, it is difficult to perceive.” on the new law. More substantively, in the Aguayo should know. He has been chal- last 12 months the administration’s anticor- lenging the regime’s secrecy for 30 years, ruption agency has been holding workshops, first as a journalist, and then as an academic conferences and teach-ins in an effort to pre- and democracy activist. A co-founder and pare the hundreds of civil servants chosen to director of the Civic Alliance, Aguayo was staff the government “liaison offices” that still an undergraduate at El Colegio de Méx- will attend to public requests after June 12. ico in the mid-1970s when he wrote a re- Ten out of Mexico’s 31 states have passed search piece for the newspaper El Día’s their own freedom of information laws. weekly supplement on the social origins of Three national news organizations now run Mexico’s wealthiest families, including mil- regular columns dedicated exclusively to lionaire (now billionaire) Carlos Hank the right to information. And former mem- González. Agents from Gobernación arrived bers of the Grupo Oaxaca have founded a at the paper that evening and ordered all new public interest group devoted to pro- copies of the magazine destroyed. moting transparency and overseeing the “By then, a democratic opening had al- law’s implementation. ready begun in the Mexican press—first Not all who matter have been support- through regional, conservative newspapers ive. Although many news media outfits like the Informador of Guadalajara and El have been outspoken proponents of the Diario of the Yucatán, followed by Mexico right to information, others—most often at City,” remembers Aguayo. But freedom of the state level, where old-style power bro- expression was exercised through opinion kers still dominate—have actually opposed columns and editorials, not through report- the law, suggesting that it will lead to cen- ing. The opinion pages became a safe place sorship. The Mexican press has long had in which intellectuals could critique the privileged access to information through its regime. When a news reporter threatened to cozy relationship with the machine, and uncover ugly truths, the government could there are those who balk at the idea of usually count on the cooperation of his pub- losing it. lisher to suppress them. On occasion, the Perhaps most daunting is the monu- regime relied on cruder methods. mental drive required to educate the public In February 2002, one of Mexico’s in a way that will make the law meaningful. largest daily newspapers, El Universal, ran Consider this: Sinaloa, the state that has a shocking four-part series on the 1968 waged the most aggressive campaign in Tlatelolco massacre. The paper published Mexico in favor of the right to information for the first time 12 photographs of student and the first state to pass its own trans- protesters killed by the Mexican security parency law, held a poll last May. More than forces. The black-and-white images cap-

66 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2003 tured the mutilated corpses of teenagers, Almost all the facts about what hap- young men and women, sprawled across pened next are still in dispute. As the the tiled floors of a police station: bodies speakers continued, a flare went off in the splashed in blood, crushed skulls, gaping square and a firestorm of bullets erupted bullet wounds, flesh sliced and punctured from the tall apartment units surrounding by the bayonets wielded by the soldiers the plaza. Witnesses claimed to have seen who had occupied the square that fateful men in civilian clothing, each sporting a October night. single white glove on one hand, using As they shook their heads over the pho- automatic weapons. When the shooting tos, most of the notable Mexicans inter- stopped hours later, dozens of bodies lay in viewed by El Universal for its series shared the plaza. How many were killed is un- the same conclusions: here was proof posi- known—about 40 victims were named and tive of the brutal campaign waged by the claimed by their families; as many as state against dissent in Mexico, and new ev- 200–300 people are believed to have died. idence of the enduring cover-up that has Successive governments since the Díaz made identifying those responsible impossi- Ordaz sexenio have remained stubbornly ble, even today. Emilio Alvarez Icaza, hu- silent about what happened at Tlatelolco, man rights ombudsman for Mexico City, and the decision by El Universal to publish called the clarification of Tlatelolco a matter its long-hidden photographs was largely of historical necessity. “Forgetting is not seen as a brave bid for openness about the justice. We cannot make the transition to a massacre. But there is another, harsher les- truly democratic state...on the basis of for- son embedded in the series: a lesson about getting what happened in the past.” the fear fostered by authoritarianism, and Such talk often returns to Tlatelolco. the silence successfully imposed by the PRI For many democracy advocates here, the during its decades in power. massacre remains a watershed moment, Manuel Rojas, the photographer who when the legitimacy of the regime began to took the gruesome pictures, died ten years crack and the challenge posed by those who ago. According to his colleagues at El Uni- sought to change the state—from armed op- versal and other news organizations, his im- position groups to peaceful university stu- ages survived to be published 34 years after dents—was handled by the government the fact due to his quick thinking, good through increasingly intolerant and repres- luck, and his paper’s ability to keep a secret. sive methods. Hundreds of other photographs like his The crisis of Tlatelolco began in the af- did not. In the hours immediately after the ternoon of October 2, 1968, when protesters massacre, agents of the Interior Secretariat gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas descended on the newsrooms of Mexico outside the government’s foreign ministry in City’s magazines and newspapers. They de- Mexico City to call on President Gustavo manded the work of all reporters, news as- Díaz Ordaz for reform. It was one of a series sistants, and photographers who had covered of demonstrations held since late July, most the demonstration. Whatever they did not of them spearheaded by students whose dis- tear up in front of the stunned journalists, satisfaction with the country’s education sys- they took away with them. Furious at the tem had blossomed into a broader rebellion theft, editors waited for photographers who against Mexico’s authoritarian regime. As had been out of the office during the agents’ the organizers rallied their audience, hun- visit; when the reporters returned, they told dreds of soldiers arrived by tank and ar- of being accosted by soldiers in the streets mored vehicle to monitor, secure, and con- surrounding Tlatelolco who confiscated tain the crowd. their undeveloped rolls.

“Forgetting Is Not Justice” 67 Like his colleagues, Rojas handed over to the president and not enough attention to his film to the Gobernación officials, but emerging political actors or to changes in he managed to drop a single roll into a society. We still don’t understand how im- wastepaper basket. He recovered it after portant accountability is—holding govern- the agents had gone. Rojas turned the res- ment officials or institutions responsible for cued roll over to El Universal’s publishers, their decisions.” who hid it away. When I ask how this might change, Ri- The newspaper had the wherewithal to va Palacio sighs: “Authoritarianism is not preserve the pictures until now; it timed just a government legacy; it was bred into their publication with the opening of the our culture. You have to train a new breed special prosecutor’s office investigating the for new times. It is going to take a whole dirty war. But El Universal is also typical of generation.” the news media born under one-party rule— for years a dependable ally of the regime, The “Mexican Solution” one that fed at the trough of government- Human rights activists and the families of paid advertisements and government-placed victims of the dirty war have already waited information disguised as articles. Under a generation for change, and they are impa- such mutually agreeable arrangements, out- tient. For a few months during 2001, the right government repression of the major Fox administration talked seriously about media was rarely a necessity; collusion and creating a truth commission. It was an ex- self-censorship was quieter and more in citing moment. Sergio Aguayo gets a far- keeping with the regime’s style. away look in his eyes when he talks about The press has become more independent what might have been. “Two colleagues and since the mid-1990s. Yet the quality of re- I were putting together a truth commission porting in Mexico—even at the biggest and proposal. It was a beautiful thing—moder- most respected newspapers—is limited and ate, structured. I still have it. It was going strangely immature, clearly stunted by its to cover human rights and corruption.” He decades of cohabitation with power. Except brought it to Los Pinos for the president to for a handful of professionals, reporters tend see. “Fox read it in front of me, paragraph to serve as stenographers rather than inter- by paragraph. He said while he was reading preters, and it is still common to read entire it, ‘This is good! I love it! This is great!’” “news” stories based on a single speech or Key figures inside the government— press release, with no context to help the including then-Foreign Secretary Jorge reader judge the significance or credibility Castañeda and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, now of the information. I asked Raymundo Riva Mexico’s ambassador to the United Na- Palacio, a veteran reporter, columnist, and tions—had lobbied for a commission mod- editor, to help me understand the Mexican eled on the experience of countries like press. He pointed out that all the publishers South Africa, Argentina, and Guatemala. or executive editors currently running pa- The idea was to hold a series of open meet- pers in Mexico City came of age during the ings based on the broad public consensus bonanza years, when the government was a that the truth about the dirty war must be source of tremendous revenue for the media. unearthed, and those responsible identified “The newspapers that exist in Mexico and held historically accountable, at least, if today are pre-transition newspapers, so our not punished. Witnesses would be called, entire way of analyzing the news is based on long-buried cases would be openly investi- a closed regime. We are still fighting old gated, and the whole thing would be cap- battles and playing by the same rules.” For tured by the press. “We figured it would be example? “We still pay too much attention a lot more difficult for Echeverría to walk

68 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2003 away with the television cameras rolling,” one agent’s words to her: “Do you know explained Castañeda. what we do with people like you? We kill The idea withered on the vine, however, them, but little by little, and they die only when other Fox officials—most notably the when we are in the mood. You are going to powerful interior secretary, Santiago Creel— beg us to kill you! ” After listening to the protested that a public truth commission commissioner’s words, President Fox an- would damage the administration’s political nounced the creation of the special prosecu- standing with the PRI. The PRI did not want tor’s office. to see its dirty laundry aired—and the PRI The concept looks good on paper. The held a plurality in Congress and was there- office was launched with an ambitious man- fore in an excellent position to stall or de- date, designed to fulfill the demands of all stroy key government initiatives. There the constituencies seeking redress for the would be no truth commission. past. First, as criminal prosecutor, the office Given what has happened since then— will name and gather evidence against the the PRI has helped stall or destroy most key perpetrators of the country’s most infamous government initiatives that have come be- human rights violations, including the fore Congress—it is difficult to see what Tlatelolco massacre of 1968, the murder of the administration gained politically. But student protesters by police thugs in 1971, talk about clarifying the past effectively and cases related to 20 years of state-spon- came to a halt until October 2001, when a sored terror during the dirty war. Second, as well-known human rights lawyer named a substitute truth commission, the office is Digna Ochoa was found dead in her Mex- charged with clarifying the past through the ico City office. The national and interna- release of occasional reports and studies of tional outrage provoked by her death, which what happened. And finally, the office must most activists believe was an assassination, work with a newly formed “Interdisciplinary prompted the government to settle quickly Committee on Reparations” to establish on an alternative to the truth commission. government policy on financial compensa- In its stead, President Fox would assign a tion to families and communities hardest special prosecutor to take on the past. hit by the violence. Fox publicized his decision on Novem- Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, the legal ber 27, 2001, following the release by the scholar chosen to head the effort, has dub- National Human Rights Commission of a bed this impressive agenda the “Mexican report on “forced disappearances” that had Solution,” and is quick to defend the ability long been in the works. In a ceremony held of his office to carry it out. Truth, justice, at Lecumberri, commission president José and reparations: “It all goes together,” he Luis Soberanes Fernández disclosed the orga- told me one afternoon. “We cannot trade nization’s findings on 532 reported cases of truth for justice. We cannot trade money disappearance during the 1970s and early for justice. The Mexican Solution is a very 1980s, stating that evidence pointed to se- appropriate response to impunity, a new curity forces in the abduction and murder of model.” at least 275 people. During his presentation, It certainly is. One reason why Latin Soberanes read a chilling excerpt of one of American countries plagued by decades of the testimonies gathered by his investiga- state-sponsored violence—countries such as tion. In it, a woman described how security Guatemala, El Salvador, and Chile—have agents forced her, her husband, and her in- chosen to create truth commissions instead fant daughter into waiting cars and drove of holding massive criminal trials is because them to a government building where all their armies and police forces are still very three were savagely tortured. She recalled powerful, and willing to go to great lengths

“Forgetting Is Not Justice” 69 to protect their members from prosecution. though formal charges were never brought Another reason is that judicial systems in against him. much of Latin America are notoriously dys- Finally, the very origins of the office functional: weak, poorly trained, beholden of the fiscal especial raises questions about to those in power. The Mexican justice sys- the intent of the government. If a truth tem stands out among the worst. Even if commission was politically tricky for an Carrillo Prieto compiles rock-solid criminal administration that did not want to run cases, he faces a court system that has long into PRI sensitivities, then how exactly is been characterized by corruption and com- a special prosecutor—charged with bring- pliance, not courage. ing criminal cases against identified hu- In fact, special prosecutors are to Mexi- man rights abusers—any less dangerous co what blue ribbon commissions are to the politically, unless it was designed to United States: if you’ve got an ugly problem be so? that won’t go away, turn it over to a fiscal es- These obstacles will be overcome by pecial. It will be sure to founder there until the actions of his office, insists Carrillo— forgotten. So it was in the case of the 1994 who strikes one as a well-intentioned man, assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio—nine earnest and vigorous. He points out that years and four special prosecutors later, the he has had a team of researchers combing investigation drags on. And so it has been the archives for a year to compile docu- with many high-profile human rights cases mentary evidence in support of cases; that over the past decade, whenever the avail- he has opened regional offices in Guerrero able evidence implicates army or police and Sinaloa where denunciations are regu- forces. larly brought by families in search of jus- As a result, human rights activists have tice; that he has divers exploring old wells been reluctant to fully endorse Carrillo Pri- for bodies; that he will organize exhuma- eto’s office. Although they have met with tions, arrange for DNA testing. And, his the special prosecutor and support families trump card—he has successfully subpoe- who bring denunciations to him, they have naed senior former officials of the old been outspoken in their critique of his goals regime to testify before his office. “We and methodology. To make matters worse, have called a former president, a former Carrillo inexplicably chose as one of his attorney general, and a retired general. most senior aides a man who is himself This would have been unimaginable three tainted by allegations of abuse. Américo years ago. And they came.” But in the Meléndez Reyna is Carrillo’s lead investiga- case of Echeverría, I protested, he cited tor looking into violations committed in his constitutional right to remain silent the student killings of 1968 and 1971. He and did not testify. “But he came. And was also the director of the state judicial none of them have called the process police of Nuevo Leon in 1998, when sev- illegitimate.” eral of his officers were implicated in the If this sounds like grasping at straws, torture and murder of a man whose body so be it. But Carrillo Prieto has a point: he was found buried in a shallow grave. Ac- is wading through uncharted waters. He cording to the U.S. State Department’s an- is also the only official door open to truth nual human rights report, a local television and accountability about the dirty war station broadcast a taped conversation in right now. If the human rights community which Meléndez Reyna was heard asking here can manage to maintain its critical the state attorney general to help him cover stance of the special prosecutor while at the up the crime. Meléndez was forced to resign same time offering the support and assis- and leave the state as a consequence, al- tance he needs to proceed—rather than dis-

70 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2003 engaging—the “Mexican Solution” may ac- files. First, the AGN has failed to create any tually solve something. kind of index or finding aid for outsiders to consult in their search for documents. As a Back to the Archives result, researchers are forced to submit a Which brings us back to the national written list of topics that interest them, and archives, where Carrillo Prieto’s staff daily then trust that archive staff will identify and trolls the files for criminal evidence that pull relevant records from among the thou- will stand up in a court of law. sands of boxes. Whether this is deliberate It is an astonishing collection. The mil- obstructionism or bad management is un- lions of pages of records and ephemera bear clear—the result is to dissuade public ac- witness to a massive spying and disinforma- cess. More troubling still, the AGN under its tion campaign, including documents on the former director, Stella González Cícero, per- state’s clandestine surveillance of universi- mitted a highly unusual arrangement in the ties, the Communist Party, guerrilla groups, transfer of the intelligence records. When and suspected subversives; thousands of they arrived at the archives, they were ac- transcripts of illegal wiretaps against the companied by a CISEN archivist, Vicente PRI’s political opponents (and sometimes its Capello, who controlled the material inside allies); copies of the anonymous hate mail the agency for over 30 years. and slanderous letters penned by govern- Capello’s presence inside the nation- ment employees in an effort to intimidate al archives is intimidating for some re- their enemies or destroy their careers; clips searchers, who fear that Gobernación may from an unsigned political column that used be monitoring the use of the records and to run weekly in the Excelsior newspaper, gathering intelligence on individual schol- written by agents from Gobernación and ars. He appears to have been given a free used by the regime to defend government hand in the control of the collection, and policies. And then there are the records of often seems to make decisions about what an even dirtier war, which chronicle the records to provide or withhold without any state’s attempt to eliminate the radical left: legal basis. army counterinsurgency plans; cables from I experienced the arbitrary hand of Señor Guerrero describing the hunt for guerrillas, Capello myself one morning when I asked the mass detentions of families of rebel lead- for a set of surveillance photographs taken at ers. Reports on interrogation sessions. Pho- some of the student demonstrations during tographs of detainees with visible signs of the summer of 1968. After locating the pic- torture. Photographs of dead people—some tures, Capello refused to turn them over to of their names appear on the list of the “dis- me because they were stapled onto pages of appeared” released by the National Human text—notes, according to him, by DFS in- Rights Commission in 2001. formants, and therefore protected from dis- There is nothing like it anywhere in closure. When I protested that there was no Latin America, unless you count Paraguay’s regulation he could cite to deny them, Archivo del Terror, which exclusively con- Capello angrily tore the photographs from tains police files and was in terrible disarray their pages, stuffed the informant notes when it was seized by citizens in 1992. By back into the file folder and handed me the contrast, the CISEN records have all the hall- stack of images—now separated from their marks of an efficient intelligence bureaucra- original context, breaking a fundamental cy: perfectly organized, pristine, arranged rule in any archivist’s code of conduct. chronologically. It is true—as some have said in defense Sadly, the Archivo General de la Nación of Capello—that there are few qualified has not encouraged use of the dirty war archivists in Mexico. The education secre-

“Forgetting Is Not Justice” 71 tariat runs a tiny school, graduating about on to enjoy long and successful careers in- eight trained archivists every year. Only one side the regime. university in the country, in the state of One example among countless: police Mexico, has a graduate program that offers a reports from 1974 describe a counterterror- specialty in archives. Nor does the culture ism operation in Culiacán, Sinaloa, targeting reward archival labor. Patricia Galeana, suspected members of a revolutionary cadre. Mexico’s National Archivist from 1994 to A student had been seized by the Judicial 1999, explains that government archives are Police, detained without food for days, in- often the repository for failed employees, a terrogated. His captors want the names of place to send them when they can’t do any- his compañeros, they want addresses. At one thing else; when she arrived at the Archivo point they force him into a police-owned ve- General de la Nación, one her archivists hicle painted to look like a television repair turned out to be illiterate. van, with tiny peep holes drilled on both But the presence of a veteran intelli- sides. As they drive around the entrances gence employee in the nation’s public to the local university, the student is told archives may be one explanation for the to point out “principal activists of the Stu- small number of researchers that actually dent Movement.” Back in the interrogation show up to use the documents. Every time room, the student repeatedly denies playing I go, I see the familiar faces of one or two a role in a recent raid on a police station and of Carrillo Prieto’s investigators. There is the killing of a police officer. His answers the usual handful of reporters looking for exasperate a state assistant attorney general good stories; one is writing a book on the who is watching the interrogation—and late Fernando Gutiérrez Barrio, Mexico’s who orders that the student be given “una notorious intelligence chief. A couple of calentada” (a beating, a going-over) “in or- foreigners. There are always plenty of emp- der to remind him what the whole world ty seats available. knows—that he participated in these two Some human rights activists, such as acts.” The lawyer’s name rang a distant bell, Rosario Ibarra of Eureka, an organization and I looked him up—he is a respected ju- founded in the 1970s by mothers of the dis- rist in Sinaloa today and was the state’s at- appeared, scoff at the idea that the files torney general from 1994–97. could contain anything valuable, claiming I don’t know what happened to the stu- that government officials purged them of dent; his name is not on the official list of incriminating evidence before turning them the “disappeared.” According to the docu- over. If that is so, they did a pretty poor job. ments, elements of the Judicial Police dis- Looking through the files, one is reminded cussed his fate among themselves: “There of the experience of Eastern Europe after the are plans to kill him once he tells every- fall of the Berlin wall, when the archives of thing he knows.” former regimes were opened by the new, This is not the Mexico we once thought postcommunist governments. While the we knew. And it is one of the more painful secret police files in countries like Poland, aspects of the democratic transition, this the Czech Republic, and East Germany experience of watching the old, resonant revealed the extent to which informants myths slowly disintegrate, like political were part of the social fabric, the Mexican posters coming apart in a rainstorm. It is archives identify active participants in Mex- also the most exciting.• ico’s dirty war—men and women who went —Mexico City, June 10, 2003

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