The delegation challenged their authority and after a few tense moments of pushing and shoving and wobbly camera footage the officials backed off and the group continued on its way. Frayed nerves apart, no one was hurt and the incident amounted to no more than a minor act of intimidation. But it left the delegation with a powerful first-hand insight into the nature of the Mexican security forces, particularly the unofficial and unauthorised nature of many of its operations.
The Mexican government is keen to present Mexico, since 1993 a member of the OECD, as a dynamic progressive society, a suitable location for international investment. An essential requirement for membership of the Liberal Democracy Club - whatever about social justice - is a reasonably independent legal system. Recent years have seen a number of reforms of the Mexican legal system. In 1994 for example, a member of the opposition PAN (neo-liberalist) was appointed head of the Attorney General's Office by the newly installed President Zedillo. The Zedillo presidency has also provided Judges with the power in certain circumstances to review the constitutionality of laws and established a Consejo de la Judicatura ( Judicial Council) to oversee the appointment of district and circuit court judges.
A significant earlier reform was the setting-up of the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH). This body performs the role of ombudsman on human rights issues, but with no power to enforce its recommendations. After the massacre of seventeen campesinos in Guerrero in June by police, the CNDH moved quickly to produce a detailed report and did not shrink from blaming the security forces. The CNDH, having been ineffective in earlier cases, gained considerable prestige as a result of its performance on the Guerrero killings. According to Amnesty International, it has been instrumental in increasing human rights awareness in Mexico. Yet despite these important reforms, human rights in Mexico continue to be violated on an alarming scale, giving the lie to the PR presentations of the Harvard trained government spin-doctors. Amnesty, though it praises the CNDH, goes on to suggest that such bodies may well be a contributory factor, rather than the result of, the ineffectiveness of the legal system.
The reality on the ground is of security forces who continuously disregard the fundamental principles of justice to which Mexico, as party to international human rights agreements, is supposed to subscribe. Arrests without warrant, illegal detention and torture are everyday features of the Mexican legal system in practice. Summary execution is also part of the security forces repertoire, although this dirty work is more usually performed by paramilitaries with links to the security forces and the PRI. The increase in para-military activity, in response to the growing assertiveness of Mexican people emboldened by the EZLN uprising, is perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Mexican situation. Like the attempts to establish a fair and free electoral process, Mexican legal reforms, while superficially impressive, are hopelessly inadequate on closer examination