As independent forensic experts cast further doubt on the Mexican government’s account of the September 2014 disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa Normal School in Iguala, Guerrero, a new examination of declassified U.S. archives sheds light on the alarming pattern of drug war atrocities that predate the Ayotzinapa case. In a new article for … Continue reading
As demonstrators across Mexico take to the streets to protest the government’s involvement in the September 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, a case bearing many of the same grim hallmarks is getting renewed attention. Today, in a new article for The Nation, I examine newly-declassified evidence of police involvement in the 2011 … Continue reading
Yesterday we published the first document from the Mexican prosecutor’s case file on the 2011 San Fernando massacre. The “Tarjeta Informativa” from the Subprocuraduría Especializada en Investigación de Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO or SEIDO) details a number of troubling allegations leveled against members of the San Fernando, Tamaulipas, police department by members of Los Zetas, the criminal … Continue reading
Yesterday, on International Right to Know Day (#IRTKD2014), our friends at the Foundation for Justice (FJEDD) and Article 19 (A19) in Mexico launched a brand new website calling on Mexico’s Attorney General (PGR) to follow the law and declassify investigative files pertaining to the 2010 and 2011 migrant massacres in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, as well as … Continue reading
This week, Mexico’s new information commissioners for the first time ordered the federal prosecutor’s office to open certain investigative files relating to the discovery of some 200 bodies in mass graves in the state of Tamaulipas in April 2011. The victims, many of them migrants headed toward the U.S-Mexico border, were pulled from intercity buses … Continue reading
INM Invokes Human Rights Clause of Mexican Access Law; Says Right to Information is “a Fundamental Human Right”; Cites Presumption of Disclosure Nearly four years later, Mexico’s federal migration agency has for the first time released declassified files on the August 2010 San Fernando massacre—in which 72 migrants were pulled from buses in Mexico’s northern … Continue reading
Judge Rules Mexican government must disclose evidence of grave human rights violations Migrant killings in Tamaulipas, Cadereyta, prima facie human rights violations Landmark decision upholds right to truth, cites “interest of society” in “avoiding impunity and the repetition of such acts in the future” This post was co-authored by Michael Evans and Jesse Franzblau of the … Continue reading
Mexico’s Senate is now in the process of selecting the country’s new information commissioners who will be at the center of pivotal transparency and human rights decisions for years to come. The competition is intense, with 158 candidates vying for the seven top positions at the Federal Access to Information Institute (IFAI). Continue reading
On April 1, 2011, Mexican authorities discovered the first of several mass graves in Tamaulipas state that all told would contain the bodies of nearly 200 people. The victims, many of them migrants headed toward the U.S-Mexico border, were pulled from intercity buses and executed by the Zetas criminal organization with the alleged complicity of … Continue reading
In a case that has important ramifications both for access to information and for human rights investigations in Mexico, a federal judge declared last week that the country’s information commissioners can and should determine whether an infamous 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas state by alleged agents of the Zetas drug cartel might constitute a grave violation of human rights under established international legal norms. Continue reading
Migration Declassified 