Development: On 7 August Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged victims of violence to “forgive but not forget” at a security policy forum in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state, revealing societal divisions over his proposed amnesty for criminals.
Significance: López Obrador has set up a series of 40 meetings across the country to involve civil society in policymaking for his pacification and national reconciliation plan aimed at reducing the rampant levels of violence in Mexico. While these inclusive forums are designed to allow citizens to influence policy, they also provide an opportunity for López Obrador to convince the country of his controversial proposals such as the amnesty.
- The specific terms of an amnesty will not be proposed until after the forums have been completed, but the future public security minister, Alfonso Durazo, has said that human rights violations such as genocide, enforced disappearances, summary executions, massacres, femicide, and human trafficking will not be covered by the amnesty.
- Yet various attendees interrupted López Obrador’s speech to express their objections to the amnesty plan, and the future interior minister, Olga Sánchez Cordero, admitted that many victims would find it very difficult to forgive criminals who had violated their rights.
- López Obrador called for national unity in the face of a complex problem, and Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral, of the right-wing opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), echoed many of his talking points during his appearance at the forum. However, other politicians expressed varying levels of opposition to the plan, and Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) senator José María Tapia Franco warned against “recreating models that have already failed in other countries”.
- The proposed amnesty is part of a radical new security plan that López Obrador hopes will reverse the trend of worsening organised crime related violence. In the last ten years an estimated 37,000 people have been ‘disappeared’ and 200,000 killed in Mexico, while homicide figures for 2017 were the worst on record with 31,174 killings recorded.
- Other proposals include the legalisation of some drugs and wide-ranging reforms of the federal security forces. The president-elect is also under pressure from campaigners who want to block the 2017 internal security law that allows further militarisation of police operations against organised crime.
Looking Ahead: The event in Ciudad Juárez was the first of 40 that will take place all over Mexico until the end of October, in indigenous communities, migrant shelters, and those regions that have been worst affected by violence. After compiling the results of these discussions López Obrador’s team will release a national reconciliation plan in November, before his inauguration on 1 December. While many people in Mexico are ready for a new approach to security, the amnesty is a polarising proposal that could cause early problems for the incoming president.
