Freedom in the World 1999 - Mexico

1999 Scores

Status: Partly Free
Freedom Rating: 3.5
Civil Liberties: 4
Political Rights: 3

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Mexico received a trend arrow upward for 1999 because the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for the first time chose its presidential nominee for the 2000 elections by means of a primary election in which all party members could participate.

Overview

The last year of the millennium marked the first time Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in power for 70 years, chose its presidential candidate in primary elections in which all party members were able to cast their ballots in secret. The winner of the primary vote, former interior minister Francisco Labastida, was endorsed by his main party rivals and became the favorite to succeed President Ernesto Zedillo, the man who had done so much to democratize the party's once strictly hierarchical and authoritarian structure, in the August 2000 elections. At the same time efforts by opposition parties to form an anti-PRI electoral front ended in failure. But progress in improving Mexico's political system was marred by the continued hold of drug barons on large parts of the country's political, economic, and security establishments, rampant urban violence and rural lawlessness; and systematic violations of human rights by the police and the military.

Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1810 and established itself as a republic in 1822. Seven years after the Revolution of 1910, a new constitution was promulgated under which the United Mexican States became a federal republic consisting of 31 states and a federal district (Mexico City). Each state has elected governors and legislatures. The president is elected to a six-year term. A bicameral congress consists of a 128-member senate elected for six years, with at least one minority senator from each state, and a 500-member chamber of deputies elected for three years – 300 directly and 200 through proportional representation.

Since its founding in 1929, the PRI has historically dominated the country by means of its corporatist, authoritarian structure maintained through co-optation, patronage, corruption, and repression. The formal business of government has taken place mostly in secret and with little legal foundation.

In 1988, PRI standard-bearer Carlos Salinas de Gortari, won the presidential elections through massive and systematic fraud. Most Mexicans believe Salinas actually lost to Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, who headed a coalition of leftist parties that later became the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Under Salinas, corruption reached unparalleled proportions, and a top antidrug official complained Mexico had become a "narco-democracy" before fleeing to exile in the United States. Many state-owned companies privatized by Salinas were bought by drug traffickers, which further exacerbated the well-entrenched corruption of Mexican political and economic life. Salinas conceded a few gubernatorial election victories to the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), which had supported his economic policies. In return PAN dropped its demands for political reform and abandoned plans to establish a pro-democracy coalition with the PRD.

Until the outbreak of the Marxist-led Zapatista rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas on New Year's Day 1994, it was assumed that Salinas's handpicked successor, Luís Donaldo Colosio, would defeat Cárdenas and PAN congressman Diego Fernández de Cevallos in the 1994 presidential election. The Zapatistas' demands for democracy and clean elections resonated throughout Mexico. Colosio was assassinated on March 23, 1994. As the PRI stand-in, Salinas substituted Zedillo, a 42-year-old U.S.-trained economist with little political experience. Despite PRI hardliners' animosity toward the party's technocrats, they placed the government machinery – the enormous resources of the state as well as the broadcast media – firmly behind Zedillo.

On August 21, 1994, Zedillo won, with nearly 50 percent of the valid vote, and the PRI won overwhelming majorities in both houses of congress. Both the PAN and the PRD disputed the elections' legitimacy, and only PRI legislators in the chamber voted to affirm the results. The next month, the reform-minded PRI secretary-general was assassinated, his murder apparently the result of internal PRI infighting. (Salinas's brother, Raul, was convicted in 1999 for planning and ordering the assassination.)

Zedillo took office on December 1, 1994. Under Zedillo, a trend that had started with Salinas, or even before, accelerated, and Mexico became the leading supplier of illegal drugs to the United States, accounting for two-thirds of the cocaine and 20 to 30 percent of the heroin entering the country.

In 1996, opposition parties of the left and right won important municipal elections in three states. Postelectoral conflicts took place in several regions. In the southern states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco, and Chiapas – where many of Mexico's indigenous people live – political violence continued to be a fact of life. But the elections left the PRI governing just two of Mexico's 12 largest cities.

In April 1996, the main political parties, with the exception of the PAN, agreed on reforms aimed at bringing about fairer elections. The reforms introduced direct elections for the mayoralty of Mexico City and abolished government control of the federal electoral institute.

The climate in which Mexicans went to the polls several times in 1997 and 1998, which included increased public financing of political parties and guarantees of fairer access to television during elections, was substantially improved from that of past elections. For the first time, in 1997 voters chose the mayor of Mexico City – and elected PRD opposition leader Cárdenas – rather than having the municipal chief appointed by the president. That year an opposition coalition made up of the PRD, PAN, and two other parties took control over the lower house of congress following the July elections; and a consensus was reached whereby the presidencies of 61 house committees were allocated on an equitable basis. By year's end, the PAN held six governorships. Elections held in 1998 in several states for gubernatorial, legislative, and municipal posts showed an uneven ability of the opposition to build upon its successes in the state federal elections. PRI candidates were able to win in contests that were not fixed, as the party won seven of ten gubernatorial contests.

In 1999, the presidential primary win by Labastida was hailed by some as the politicians' return to the helm of a party ruled during the three previous administrations by technocrats. In September the PAN nominated Vicente Fox, governor of Guanajuato state, as its presidential candidate, while Cárdenas took leave of the Mexico City mayoralty and announced he would again lead the PRD's national ticket. In September a former PRI mayor and 23 other people were sentenced to 35 years in prison for their parts in the December 1997 massacre of 45 Indians in Chiapas. In November the graves of eight people were discovered near the U.S. border outside Juarez, the victims of a narcotics cartel campaign against rivals and U.S. drug informants. Investigators say they believe the graves to yield up to 100 bodies.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Elections in Mexico held from 1997 to 1999 were the fairest in the country's history. The November 9, 1999, PRI presidential primary was contested by several senior party leaders, including a state governor who waged an aggressive maverick campaign against the party establishment. In general, the electoral playing field was substantially improved, including fairer press coverage and the creation of an independent federal electoral institute, although the PRI continued to hold important advantages. Zedillo ceded a significant quota of power in pursuit of democratization of the PRI when in 1998 he announced he was giving up the dedazo – in which the outgoing president handpicks his party's presidential nominee.

Supreme court judges are appointed by the executive and rubber-stamped by the senate. The judicial system is weak, politicized, and riddled with the corruption infecting all official bodies. In most rural areas, respect for laws by official agencies is nearly nonexistent. Lower courts and law enforcement in general are undermined by widespread bribery. In May 1999, Adán Amezcua, who U.S. antidrug officials say is the world's biggest trafficker in synthetic drugs, was released by a Mexican court on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

Constitutional guarantees regarding political and civic organizations are generally respected in the urban north and central parts of the country. However, political and civic expression is restricted throughout rural Mexico, in poor urban areas, and in poor southern states where the government frequently takes repressive measures against the left-wing PRD and peasant and indigenous groups.

Civil society has grown in recent years: human rights, pro-democracy, women's and environmental groups are active. However, government critics remain subject to forms of sophisticated intimidation that range from gentle warnings by government officials and anonymous death threats, to unwarranted detention and jailings on dubious charges.

An official human rights commission was created in 1990. However, it is barred from examining political and labor rights violations, and cannot enforce its recommendations. For more than five years the human rights situation has deteriorated, with hundreds of arbitrary detentions, widespread torture, scores of extrajudicial executions, and a number of forced disappearances reported by nongovernmental organizations. According to Amnesty International there is "compelling evidence that extrajudicial executions are carried out" by the army, police, and paramilitary groups.

Torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement agents continue despite government promises to reform the police agencies, even as Mexico's soaring crime rate and lack of effective law enforcement have begun to be viewed as serious barriers to economic development. An estimated ten percent of all extortive kidnappings carried out in Mexico, which ranks second only to Colombia in the greatest number of attacks in Latin America, were carried out by police officers.

During the outbreak of the still-simmering Chiapas rebellion, the military was responsible for widespread human rights violations. Army counterinsurgency efforts continue to cause numerous rights violations in Chiapas and in the state of Guerrero, where a shadowy Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), thought by some to be agents provocateurs, has provided a pretext for military action against local PRD leaders.

The growing role of the military in internal security – ostensibly to combat domestic terrorism, drug trafficking and street crime – has contributed to grave human rights problems, particularly in rural areas. The official human rights commission refuses to investigate some nearly 2,000 cases of reported human rights violations by the military. In late 1998, a small group of military officers staged a protest against the military court system and demanded the abolition of the exclusively military legal jurisdiction, which human rights groups say also exacerbates a widespread culture of impunity in rights prosecutions. In 1999 Amnesty International reported that "suspects have been detained, held in secret detention and subjected to torture – typically to extract confessions against suspected supporters of the armed opposition."

Published reports offered continuing evidence of close links between drug traffickers and the armed forces, contradicting official versions that have sought to portray the military as less prone to corruption and drug cartel influence than is civilian law enforcement.

The media, while mostly private, depend on the government for advertising revenue. Mexico's newspaper industry is considered one of Latin America's least independent and most openly corrupt. A handful of daily newspapers and weeklies are the exceptions. Mexico City's oldest daily, El Universal, in 1999 introduced its first code of conduct for reporters. The ruling party dominates television, by far the country's most influential medium. Violent attacks against journalists are common, with reporters investigating police issues, narcotics trafficking, and public corruption at particular risk.

In 1992 the constitution was amended to restore the legal status of the Catholic Church and other religious institutions. Priests and nuns were allowed to vote for the first time in nearly 80 years. Nonetheless, activist priests promoting the rights of Indians and the poor, particularly in southern states, remain subject to threats and intimidation by conservative landowners and local PRI bosses.

Officially recognized labor unions operate as political instruments of the PRI, and most are grouped under the Confederation of Mexican Workers, whose leadership in recent years has been increasingly challenged by trade union dissidents. The government does not recognize independent unions, denying them collective bargaining rights and the right to strike. The maquiladora regime of export-only production facilities has created substantial abuse of worker rights. Most maquiladora workers are young, uneducated women who accept lower pay more readily, with annual labor turnover averaging between 200 and 300 percent. They have no medical insurance, holidays, or profit sharing, and female employees are frequently the targets of sexual harassment and abuse. The companies also discriminate against pregnant women in order to avoid having to give them maternity leave. The government consistently fails to enforce child labor laws.

Only 7 of Mexico's 31 states and the federal district have specific laws against domestic violence and sexual abuse, although some experts say that between five and seven of every ten Mexican women are the victims of abuse.

Independent unions and peasant organizations are subject to intimidation, blacklisting, and violent crackdowns. Dozens of labor and peasant leaders have been killed in recent years in ongoing land disputes, particularly in the southern states, where Indians constitute close to half the population.