by ISIDA TUSHE
In recent months, the media has widely reported on the continuous human rights violations committed by members of the Mexican military. While news of these atrocities only recently surfaced on major news stations, Mexican authorities, in fact, have been struggling with human rights abuses since 2007 when these pivotal events first started to come to light. Such atrocities peaked during President Felipe Calderón’s six years in office, as police and armed forces have been found to be involved in at least 170 cases of torture, 24 extrajudicial killings, and 39 forced disappearances since 2006.1 When President Calderon first came to power, he dispatched military forces throughout Mexico in an attempt to take down the drug cartels and deter the violence generated by rival criminal organizations fighting over territory and clientele. Instead of reducing violence, the military forces began perpetuating the very crimes they were charged with stopping. In a country where drug cartels have been coexisting with civil society for years, the police and military forces became embedded in the pockets of the traffickers. In Mexico, the cartels are dominate specific geographical parts of the country, and the fight for influence and expansion of territory is constant. These drug cartels are not managed by corner thugs and criminal layabouts, but by sophisticated businessmen who employ a vast network of individuals which include financial officers, hit men, and lieutenants.2 Mexico is a poor country containing many immensely wealthy individuals. Most Mexican citizens, however, struggle daily to bring food to the table to feed their families. In order for the drug cartels to be able to operate in a country like Mexico, it is widely believed that the government has to be, directly or indirectly involved in supporting these criminal elements. Accusations that the country’s various police forces have been corrupted by the cartels have been mounting for decades and unquestionably have merit to them. The fact that almost no major progress has been made towards dissolving Mexico’s drug cartels shows that the police departments have been deeply compromised by bribery, corruption, and venality.
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