Commissions Regarding 1968 Massacres in Tlaltelolco

On November 27, 2001, President Vicente Fox Quesada created this Special Prosecutor's Office, under the Office of the Government Attorney, to investigate the massacres, torture, disappearances, and genocide of dissidents and opponents of the authoritarian regime of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI). The PRI had just lost the elections of 2000, after having been in power for more than seventy years, to a great extent through repressive measures that reached the extreme of crimes against humanity. The main cases that this office was to investigate and punish were the massacre of hundreds of students by the army and paramilitary groups in 1968 and 1971; and the "dirty war" that led to the murder, torture, and "disappearance" of mainly leftist militants in the 1970s.

Some relatives of the victims—who would have preferred a truth commission in the form of those of South Africa, El Salvador, and Guatemala—were suspicious of the newly created Special Prosecutor's Office, believing that the powerful criminals of the old regime would be able to pressure for impunity, as in other legal instances. Some members of Fox's cabinet supported the idea of a truth commission because, given Mexico's weak judicial system, it would be the only way to have an effective instrument of transitional justice. Nevertheless, the more conservative elements in the cabinet won the debate, arguing that a commission would not have the legal power to put the offenders in prison, and that the Special Prosecutor's Office would help to channel the demands for justice through qualified institutional avenues.

The Special Prosecutor's Office was a failure and closed on March 27, 2007, less than four months after Felipe Calderón assumed the presidency. In shutting it down, the government argued that it lacked jurisdiction and produced poor results. Special Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto was not only suspected of embezzlement of at least part of the budget of 300 million Mexican pesos but had also made grave juridical errors in the trials (raising suspicion of concealment) and did not manage to win a single conviction. Nevertheless, Carrillo claimed that the office was closed down through an agreement between the Fox and Calderón administrations and the PRI and high army commanders. Relatives of the victims assert that the administrations in power during the transition to democracy have granted a de facto amnesty to the criminals of the old regime, perpetuating their impunity.

See alsoMexico, Political Parties: Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aguayo Quezada, Sergio, and Javier Treviño. "Neither Truth Not Justice: Mexico's De Facto Amnesty." Latin American Perspectivies 33 (March 2006): 56-68.

Castellanos, Laura. México Armada. 1943–1981. Mexico City: Era, 2007. See chapter 7.

                                         FroylÁn Enciso