U.S. funding has supported Mexican government bodies accused of murders, crimes, abuses

U.S. funding has supported Mexican government bodies accused of murders, crimes, abuses

Published 12 May 2015

Over the past year, Mexican authorities have been implicated in cases involving the deaths of hundreds of civilians whose bodies were later found in mass graves. Most of these authorities work for local law enforcement and federal security agencies, which might have received funding from U.S. government programs created to combat Mexico’s illegal drug trade. In 2013, 98.3 percent of crimes in Mexico went unpunished, according to Mexican government statistics. Of the hundreds of mass graves discovered in Mexico in recent years, federal prosecutors have reported opening just fifteen investigations between 2011 and April 2015.

Over the past year, Mexican authorities have been implicated in cases involving the deaths of hundreds of civilians whose bodies were later found in mass graves. Most of these authorities work for local law enforcement and federal security agencies, which might have received funding from U.S. government programs created to combat Mexico’s illegal drug trade.
U.S. government documents obtained by the National Security Archive through Freedom of Information Act requests reveal that the Obama administration is aware that its funding could have supported Mexican authorities connected to abuses, yet, with few exceptions, the money continues to reach Mexico.
Last September, forty-three male students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa in the Mexican city of Iguala were kidnapped. The Mexican government has sought to portray the kidnapping as the work of local government officials and their drug cartel accomplices, but evidence has led residents to believe that state officials had a part to play.
The search for the students has led to twenty-eight bodies found in nearby mass graves. None of the bodies matched the missing Ayotzinapa students, but an October 2014 internal report from the U.S. Army’s Northern Command noted that the graves raised “alarming questions about the widespread nature of cartel violence in the region and the level of government complicity.”
According to theIntercept, the Northern Command also responded to the case of a Mexican army officer and seven soldiers who had recently been arrested for killing twenty-two people last June in Tlatlaya, in the state of Mexico. The commander of the military zone overseeing the battalion responsible for the Tlatlaya killings was put under investigation by the Mexican military, and if he were to be implicated in “a gross human rights violation,” the Northern Command report noted, “the entire military zone and 10,000 personnel will be ineligible for U.S. security cooperation assistance.”
The Leahy Law, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) prohibits U.S. assistance to foreign security forces credibly believed to have committed a gross human rights violation.
Since fiscal year 2008, the U.S. government has spent roughly $2.3 billion on security aid to Mexico, largely through the Mérida Initiative, a counter-drug strategy modeled on Plan Colombia, through which the United States spent billions of dollars to combat that country’s drug war. U.S. security aid to Mexico comes in addition to direct sales of arms and other equipment, which totaled over $1.15 billion in 2014 alone.
The Obama administration has shifted the emphasis of Mérida funds from military hardware to programs focused on institutional reform, including training local law enforcement, but even with all the financial assistance and training from the United States, the Mexican government has done a poor job of investigating and punishing the perpetrators of recent crimes. In 2013, 98.3 percent of crimes in Mexico went unpunished, according to Mexican government statistics. Of the hundreds of mass graves discovered in Mexico in recent years, federal prosecutors have reported opening just fifteen investigations between 2011 and April 2015, according to Article 19, a human rights organization.
The State Department has condemned the Iguala kidnappings, along with other crimes connected to Mexican law enforcement agencies, but the United States continue to support Mexico with security aid. TheIntercept asked the State Department for a list of all Mexican agencies that have been cut off from U.S. funding due to human rights violations since the start of the Mérida Initiative, but the department said such a list was not yet available.
“It’s incomprehensible that they don’t already have that list,” wrote Laura Carlsen, Mexico City-based director of the Americas Program, in an e-mail to theIntercept. “The bigger picture is that this aid does go to human rights violators. U.S. taxpayer dollars are supporting a drug war that emboldens abusive government forces that are executing and disappearing Mexican citizens. No amount of withholding or (human right) conditioning will change that,” Carlsen added.