Violence, Human Rights and Citizen Security

Mexico is currently facing an acute public security crisis. The 43 students from Ayotzinapa who since September 26 have been forcibly disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, are but a symptom of a pile of political problems generated by the capture of various state functions by ‘organized crime’.

Two phenomena in particular might explain the spread of the ‘capturing’ of state functions at municipal and state level:

• First, the debility and ineffectiveness of state institutions in the area of security and justice.
• Secondly, an electoral system that privileges money as the main driver behind political campaigns and, consequently, gives political power to those with access to most money; the latter making political parties either vulnerable to, or direct accomplices in, organized criminal activity.

Since late September, but with more force during the last week, a strong social movement is forming around a demand for justice. “They were taken alive, alive we want them back” is shouted in chorus by various social classes in the hundreds of marches and protests organized around the country. Whether accompanied by attacks on state buildings or just whispered silently in peaceful manifestations in public parks and squares, the protests contest to a growing abyss between civil society and state politics, as well as to growing distrust in the state.

What is happening in Mexico is happening in Central America as well, in particular in the Northern Triangle comprising El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In the midst of the severe political crisis that Mexico and central America is facing, a new publication sheds light on the institutional weakness, the elevated distrust in the justice and security sectors (due to their ineffectiveness), the high levels of corruption and abuse of power, the failure of reform initiatives, the impunity of those committing the crimes (who only rarely are taken to court), the high level of human rights violations and the abandonment of the prison systems. The Team of Reflection, Investigation and Communication and the Radio Progreso (ERIC-RP) and the Alliance for Peace and Justice (APJ) have put together an edited volume in which various Latin American researchers reflect on human security in the region.

Among the themes included are human security, cultural criminology and social work with violent youth as actors of change; violent minorities, depraved oligarchs and the origins of violence in Honduras; dialogues on rights, justice and security; the impact of security policies on the Honduran penitentiary system; the municipal political reform in Mexico; the justice and security sector reform in Honduras; and the violence accompanying current migratory movements from Central to North America. The latter article by José Luís Rocha – a member of the DIIS-based research network on ‘The Migration Industry and New Markets for Migration Control’ - analyses the relation between violence and migration with particular emphasis the relationship between U.S. induced deportation of gang members, markets for drugs, the empowerment of the military, the creation and training of repressive groups, and the market for trade in arms that supplies the corporate criminal networks in the region.

The publication is in Spanish and available for free download