Violence and Justice in Mexico

© COPYRIGHT
by
Jennifer Ann Yelle
2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
VIOLENCE AND JUSTICE IN MEXICO:
WHY TRUST IN INSTITUTIONS MATTERS
BY
JENNIFER ANN YELLE
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the role of the judiciary and police force in keeping law and order in a
community, specifically in regards to violence reduction. While most studies presume that a
focus on institutional performance is the key to optimizing these institutions’ ability to reduce
violence, I offer a different approach and show that a focus on trust in the institution is the
critical component to violence reduction. I show that historical processes of democratization and
liberalization impact the amount of trust a state’s political institutions have; and the resulting
trust continues to affect the institutions’ ability to reform and impose a rule-of-law. Drawing
from Mexico’s 2,438 municipalities, I quantitatively demonstrate through a zero-inflated
negative binomial model that trust in the institution is a driving force behind the institutions’
ability to reduce violence. I compliment the statistical model with three in depth case studies of
Oaxaca, Baja California and Mexico State. During field research in these states from 2012 to
2013, I surveyed and interviewed local populations as well as collected many official documents
regarding the status of violence and justice in the community. These case studies demonstrate
that an institution’s trust is often a legacy of each state’s historical experience with political
democratization and economic liberalization. The result is a nation with varying levels of trust in
the institution, and thus, varying capabilities to impose a rule-of-law and reduce violence. I
argue that thin institutional reform—in an attempt to impose a rule-of-law and reduce violence—
has historically failed and will continue to do so unless trust in the institution is first addressed.
In the wide expanse of social science research, academics and policy makers often neglect the
importance of trust in the institution, perhaps because it does not lend itself easily to analysis, or
perhaps because it cannot easily be addressed via public policy. In the course of this analysis, I
attempt to convince the reader, quantitatively and qualitatively, that trust matters and is in fact
the key-holder to continued democratic development.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Justice in Mexico ...................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1: How Rule-of-law Institutions Work............................................................................ 13
Legal Sanctions as a Disincentive to Criminal Behavior.................................................. 14
Trust as Disincentive to Criminal Behavior...................................................................... 17
Chapter 2: A History of Mexico's Rule-of-law Institutions .......................................................... 22
Police................................................................................................................................. 23
The Judiciary..................................................................................................................... 29
Chapter 3: Statistical Evaluation of the Rule-of-law Reforms ..................................................... 36
Hypotheses ........................................................................................................................ 36
Research Design................................................................................................................ 40
Modeling the Role of Trust in the institution in Crime Reduction ................................... 44
Chapter 4: The Cases of Mexico State, Oaxaca, and Baja California .......................................... 64
Mexico State ..................................................................................................................... 70
Oaxaca............................................................................................................................... 83
Baja California ................................................................................................................ 100
Chapter 5: Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................. 111
A last word on trade-offs, weakness, and reflections on bias ......................................... 115
Appendix 1: FASP Evaluation .................................................................................................... 120
Appendix 2: Oaxaca survey respondents’ origin ........................................................................ 122
Appendix 3: Mexico State survey respondents’ origin ............................................................... 123
Appendix 4: Baja California survey respondents’ origin ........................................................... 124
Appendix 5: Survey .................................................................................................................... 125
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 130
List of Tables
Table 1: Reforms and Average Number of Homicides per Municipalities .................................. 44
Table 2: Series of ZINB models estimating the impact of reform and trust on homicides .......... 53
Table 3: ZINB Model showing the Impact of the Judiciary on the Count of Drug-Related
Homicides in Mexico, 2007 -2009................................................................................................ 54
Table 4: Changes in predicted probabilities of homicide given levels of trust in the institution . 58
Table 5: ZINB Model showing the Impact of Police on the Count of Drug-Related Homicides in
Mexico, 2007 -2009 ...................................................................................................................... 61
Table 6: Public perceptions of the courts in Baja California, Oaxaca, and Mexico State ............ 69
Table 7: Moral Agreement with Judicial Reforms ....................................................................... 88
List of Figures
Figure 1: Previous Police Structure .............................................................................................. 25
Figure 2: Post-Reform Structure ................................................................................................... 26
Figure 3: Impunity - Status Quo ................................................................................................... 38
Figure 4:Impunity - Performance.................................................................................................. 38
Figure 5: Impunity - Participation................................................................................................. 38
Figure 6: Impunity - Interaction of Performance and Participation .............................................. 38
Figure 7: Map of Judicial Reform Implementation Status - CCISJP ........................................... 40
Figure 8: Map of Judicial Reform Status - Ingram ....................................................................... 41
Figure 9: Count of Drug-Related Homicides per Municipality, 2010 .......................................... 47
Figure 10: Spectrum of Participation in the Rule-of-Law ............................................................ 65
Figure 11: Trust in the judiciary in Baja California, Oaxaca, and Mexico State .......................... 67
Figure 12: Indicator of Trained Judicial Workers in Proportion to All Judicial Workers, Mexico
State .............................................................................................................................................. 75
Figure 13: Salina Cruz Court Performance ................................................................................... 92
Figure 14: Increase of Capacity in the Accusatorial System in Baja California ........................ 104
Introduction: Justice in Mexico
"We have to gain ground in the minds of citizens and convince ourselves that justice is the only
correct way to build a rule-of-law, as this is not possible with only the will of the authorities.
However good the officials are, honest and well-trained, they need the support of a society which
is pushing, demanding and making the law a basic element of coexistence"
-Alfredo Lagunas Rivera, the Chief Justice of the Oaxacan Supreme Court1
Over 60,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico in the past decade. The
drug- related violence reached record proportions in 2010, increasing to 15,273 people killed.2
This is over a 500 percent increase from 2007 when 2,826 people were killed. Policy makers in
Mexico have implemented substantial reforms to their law enforcement institutions as a way to
increase the government’s ability to impose a rule-of-law. They have created a federalized
police force and mandated one of the largest overhauls of their judiciary in history, changing
from an inquisitorial system based on Napoleonic-era laws to a mixed-adversarial system.
Adversarial systems, such as that used in the United States, create a more impartial court where
the defense and prosecution each plead their case and the court acts as a moderator. In
inquisitorial systems, the court is a more active player involved in investigating the facts. The
reform to an adversarial system in Mexico introduces oral trials into the courts, less discretion in
the public prosecutors’ offices in prosecuting, and less discretion among judges in sentencing.
The focus of this dissertation is to assess whether these judicial reforms have helped to
reduce violence in the areas where they were first implemented. I illustrate through the course of
this manuscript that the judicial reforms by themselves will not reduce violence. I show that
institutional trust is an intervening factor which determines whether the reform will be able to
1
Alfredo Lagunas Rivera, “Noticias” (Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Estado de Oaxaca, July
17, 2012).
2
Presidencia de la Republica, Homicidios, n.d.
1
incite a reduction in violence. After I offer quantitative evidence in support of this claim, I
address a second ancillary question: why do some states have trust while others do not? To
address this question, I explore three case studies and their democratic history. I show that
differences in democratization in these states, and specifically, differences in institutional
development as a result of subnational authoritarianism, have resulted in varying degrees of
acceptance of the institutional reform across Mexico’s 32 states. I show that in areas where trust
has been historically low, the reforms did not help to reduce violence. And in other areas where
trust has been historically high, the reforms have started to help reduce violence.
Although the focus of this dissertation is on the judicial reform process in Mexico, the
judiciary is intricately linked to the police force and as such, cannot be separated out completely.
A court cannot provide a fair trial under an adversarial system if the police do not provide crime
scene evidence gathered within the confines of the law. These two rule of flaw institutions are
co-dependent and increasing security in general depends upon them both moving in tandem
toward a more efficient and just mode of operation. Because of this, I complement many
analyses of the judiciary with integrated analyses of the concomitant police reform process. The
police forces have reformed via a program called FASP (Contribution Fund for Public Security)
in each state and an additional program called Subsumen (Grant for Municipal Public Security)
for 220 municipalities with the highest crime rates. These funds from the FASP program are
aimed at eight different components of a healthy police force: regulatory framework, operation
and structure, professionalization, confidence, equipment, infrastructure, information systems,
and use of financial resources.3 By bolstering these components, the reform aims to give the
police a higher capacity to respond to societal demands and a greater amount of
3
Sistema de Seguimiento y Evaluación, “Diagnostico de Las Corporaciones Policiales Estatales”
(Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública, December 31, 2010).
2
professionalization to ensure that the police response adheres to expected protocol.
Numerous reforms to the police and judiciary have taken place in modern history in an
explicit effort to establish a rule of law; however, these thin structural changes have not
addressed a root cause of institutional failure: societal trust. I argue that the recent 2008 reforms
in Mexico are only able to be successful in reducing violence in states where society holds some
semblance of trust in the institutions. I argue that low trust in the institution acts as a barrier to
the reform effort by keeping public participation in the rule-of-law institutions (e.g., reporting
crimes, offering witness testimony) at a low level. This lack of participation means that many
crimes are not reported, criminals are not brought to justice, and the court and judiciary lose their
deterrence effect. Indeed, from 2002 to 2009, the percentage of citizens who said they did not
report a crime that they witnessed increased from an already high 73 percent to an even higher 78
percent of the population.4 The main reason given was that the respondent thought that it would
be a waste of time.
In the beginning of the 21st century, scholars have taken a greater interest in this lack of
trust in political institutions. Their analyses, discussed at length in the following chapter,
illustrate that trust in institutions can have substantial benefits for deterring criminal behavior. It
is not gained by patron-client relationships, but rather, by bolstering public participation and
watch-dog behavior that constrains potential abuses.
Instead of focusing on institutional trust and participation, the reforms mandated widespread and indiscriminate structural changes which theoretically should advance performance,
decrease corruption, and increase coordination. As a result, it was hoped, the police and courts
4
“Primera Encuesta Nacional Sobre Inseguridad Public En Las Entidades Federativas” (Instituto
Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad, May 2002); “Sexta Encuesta Nacional Sobre
Inseguridad” (Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad, October 2009).
3
would investigate and prosecute more criminals and this would lead Mexico out of the
downward spiral of crime. In the pages to follow, I explain the flaw in this logic. I show that
structural changes will not achieve the desired results of violence reduction unless there is a
preexisting trust in the institution. I then lay out evidence that trust in the institutions is path
dependent and restricted by state-wide histories of authoritarianism. In other, more fortunate
states, trust in the institution has been increasing for the past thirty years just as state-wide
processes of democratization and economic prosperity took hold. The increasing trust in the
institution in these states helps to convince society that the institution is in fact capable of
transitioning to a new protocol (i.e., the adversarial reform). (It is hard for people to believe that
an illegitimate institution can master new protocols when they did not use the old ones ethically
or efficiently). When this trust in the institution exists, the reforms bolster public participation in
the rule-of-law and deter crime (to an extent). These populations who continue to distrust the
political institutions are clustered in states where clientelism and authoritarianism remained
much longer than other states, and indeed, remnants of these old systems of governance even
remain in use today.
Trust in the institution has been weakened in certain states, and bolstered in others, since
the fall of single-party authoritarianism. There is a long history of authoritarianism, clientelism,
corruption and inefficiencies that explain the original crumbling of institutional trust across
Mexico. However, individual states have had different experiences with the democratization
over the past few decades and that state-level experience with democratization affected trust in
institutions.
The most notable aspect of Mexican politics in modern history is the 71 year rule of
single-party authoritarianism and the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). The history of
4
clientelism in Mexico, however, dates back even further to colonial times where local strong
men, caciques, headed these societal relations. When the PRI came into power they herded the
caciques under the PRI umbrella through incentives and coercion:
President Calles, with the support of the military, transformed the PRI into a national
hegemonic party. He convinced the regional leaders [caciques] to join the party and to
adhere to its national policies with an offer of a carrot and a stick. The carrot was a
promise of long, secure, and profitable careers under the protective wing of the PRI,
which would gain control over the nomination (and effectively the election) of governors.
The stick was a threat of personal violence against the caciques who declined to join.
Nearly all joined, a few who did not were killed.5
The caciques implemented social control within the community by ensuring that the
people knew who to rely on for access to government goods and services6 These relationships—
between the PRI’s strong-men and society—are known as clientelistic relations, defined as when
“a person of social status (the patron) and a second person of low status (the client) agree to
exchange goods and services … to mutual benefit.”7 These exchanges do not have to be equal,
only fulfill mutual expectations.8
Clientelistic policies were abundant in Mexico under the PRI and they allowed the party
to use federally-funded financial programs against opponents. The national party can use the
federal purse to gain local votes by targeting social programs at demographics where votes are
needed. The federal government disperses financial resources through two primary channels: a
set amount of tax revenue redistributed at the local-level and discretionary investment programs
channeled by the federal government to the states. These latter investment programs are often
5
Andrei Shleifer Olivier Blanchard, Federalism With and Without Political Centralization:
China Versus Russia (Palgrave Macmillan Journals, 2001).
6
Stephen Morris, Political Corruption in Mexico (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009).
7
Tina Hilgers, “Causes and Consequences of Political Clientelism: Mexico’s PRD in
Comparative Perspective,” Latin American Politics and Society 50 (2008): 123–153.
8
Ibid.
5
conceived as politically motivated because they allow for the president’s party to manipulate the
redistribution as needed in order to gain electoral support.9 Cash transfer welfare programs such
as "Solidaridad" (under the PRI) transferred funds directly to citizens, cutting out the municipal
and state government. This system ensured that the national political party—as opposed to local
governments—received credit for social spending and projects within the community, thereby
stifling the possibility of local governments to translate government resources into political
capital.
In the 1980s and 1990s, two important processes started in Mexico: fiscal
decentralization and the rise of local party politics. Most scholars note that the PRI began its
decline in the late 1980s and early 1990s with losses in municipal elections. Municipal
democratization occurred through a gradual increase in electoral margins by the Partido Acción
Nacional (PAN), and where PAN and other opposition parties did not exist, there was a sudden
and successful emergence of alternative parties such as the Partido Revolucionario Democrática
(PRD) in Michoacán.1011
Unlike local politics, the national political system did not witness a similarly spectacular
emergence of opposition viability. The national realignment was gradual. Societal changes
(e.g., modernization, demographic changes, and migration to the cities) continuously propelled
the decline of the PRI and created a shift in electoral cleavages.12 In 1991, the PRI was able to
9
Christopher Garman, Stephan Haggard and Eliza Willis, ‘Fiscal Decentralization: A Political
Theory with Latin American Cases’, World Politics, Vol. 53, No. 2 (2001), pp. 233
10
Jonathan Hiskey and Damarys Canache, “The Demise of One-Party Politics in Mexican
Municipal Elections,” British Journal of Political Science 35 (2005): 257–284.
11
Scholars have disagreed about the rise of PRD in Michoacán. While some attribute a sudden
electoral realignment as the impetus (Hiskey 2005), others attribute a shift in elite alliances as
many politicians fled from the falling PRI party to create new parties (Matthew Cleary 2006).
12
Joseph Klesner, “Modernization, Economic Crisis, and Electoral Alignment in Mexico,”
6
regain support by focusing on areas of low participation in the 1988 election. 13 Yet by 2000, the
realignment had persisted and by this time there were fewer weak partisans in the electorate for
the parties to co-opt. As a result of this, the PAN and PRD increasingly became “catch-all”
parties and allowed for a united anti-PRI stance to take place despite the presence of two distinct
opposition parties.14 The PRI suffered electorally at the hands of these pro-regime and antiregime platforms.15 Their final defeat was the loss of the presidency in the 2000 election which
brought PAN’s Vincente Fox to the president’s office and the end of national authoritarianism
(but subnational authoritarianism persisted).
The PRI’s national decline meant the decline of numerous hierarchical power relations.
Citizens who had become accustomed to the PRI’s clientelistic networks found themselves
without this arrangement. Business and civic organizations who had become accustomed to
navigating the PRI’s system of “mutual favors” found themselves in a chaotic open market of
favors.16
On average, the fall of the hegemonic PRI and its clientelistic network was met with
more local autonomy (politically and fiscally) and the rise of strong opposition parties.
However, all states experienced the same level of local autonomy and opposition strength. For
instance, both Michoacán and Baja California were early democratizers, expressing support for
local opposition parties in the 1980s and having some of the first opposition politician in office;
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Summer (1993): 187–223.
13
Ibid.
14
Joseph Klesner, “Electoral Competition and the New Party System in Mexico,” Latin
American Politics and Society 47 (2005): 103–142.
15
Jeffrey Weldon Juan Molinar, “Elecciones de 1988 En Mexico: Crisis Del Autoritarismo,”
Revista Mexicana de Sociologia 52 (1990): 229–262.
16
Morris, Political Corruption in Mexico.
7
nonetheless, these two states have had very different experiences with democratization.
Michoacán’s attempt at democratization was met with federal intervention; economically,
politically, and militarily. The left became prominent in the 1980s in Michoacán but despite their
wide-spread victories in municipal elections, the municipal leaders’ lack of financial resources
and discretion in spending resources ensured that municipal level governance did not translate
into greater (i.e., national) electoral gains and repression by the central PRI state.17 As the PRI
support declined in the late 20th century, the PAN became the safe opposition party for which to
express an anti-PRI vote. Because PAN candidates were willing to compromise or negotiate
with the PRI on certain policy issues, the PRI tolerated PAN opposition more than PRD and both
parties worked actively to see the PRD party hindered,18 at a great cost to those states and
municipalities that remained loyal to the PRD such as those in Michoacán. Whereas opposition
parties received recognition in Baja California, in Michoacán, they were forced to violent
protest.19 The PRI’s preference for the PAN over the PRD ensured that not all opposition
victories turned into the seeds for democratic transition.20 This developed into subnational
pockets of democratization across Mexico.21
17
Kathleen Bruhn, “PRD Local Governments in Michoacán: Implications for Mexico’s
Democratization Process,” in Subnational Politics and Democratization in Mexico, ed. Wayne
Cornelius, Todd Eisenstadt, and Jane Hindley (1996: La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies,
University of California, San Diego, n.d.).
18
see Todd Eisenstadt, Courting democracy in Mexico: party strategies and electoral
institutions, (Cambridge University Press 2004), and Kathleen Bruhn, ‘PRD Local
Governments in Michoacán: Implications for Mexico’s Democratization Process’
19
Matthew Cleary and Susan Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism, Series on Trust
(Russell Sage Foundation, 2009), 47.
20
Todd Eisenstadt, Courting Democracy in Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004); Bruhn, “PRD Local Governments in Michoacán: Implications for Mexico’s
Democratization Process.”
21
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Democracy in “Two Mexicos”: Political Institutions in Oaxaca
and Nuevo Leon (Palgrave Macmillon, 2013).
8
Similarly, the liberalizing economic policies of the 1990s produced positive outcomes in
some regions while decimating others. In Baja California, they help spur a robust civil society
with autonomous institutions,22 yet these same policies devastated the countryside of Michoacán
and instead incited the rise of more informal institutions, including organization crime.23
Victoria Malkin found that mandated neo-liberal reforms decimated much of the rural, legitimate
agriculture industry in Michoacán. This period of modernization and agro-industrial
development saw the rise of a “new rich” which instead capitalized on the burgeoning drug
business. Since this time, the narco-trafficking industry in parts of rural Michoacán24 has become
a symbol of modernity and a reminder that the central state abandoned the region.25
Although the electoral system became democratic, many components of a more
expansive definition of democracy (such as those defined by Linz and Stepan26: legitimate
institutions, respecting outcomes of elections, greater municipal power in governance, little
clientelism) remained elusive. For the purpose of this dissertation, I focus on the lack of trust in
institutions and what this has meant for reform efforts and attempts to impose a rule-of-law.
In this analysis of reform efforts and institutional trust, this dissertation proceeds through
five chapters. I first delve into a theoretical exploration of how a judiciary is supposed to affect
crime in Chapter 1. The common wisdom regarding judiciaries and police is that they deter
crime by ensuring that crimes received punishment. I caveat this common wisdom by suggesting
22
Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism, 37–46.
23
Victoria Malkin, “Narcotrafficking, Migration, and Modernity in Rural Mexico,” Latin
American Perspectives 28 (2001): 101.
24
Notably in the Tierra Caliente region
25
Malkin, “Narcotrafficking, Migration, and Modernity in Rural Mexico.”
26
Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996).
9
that this deterrence only works when the institution holds some trust in society. Without trust, I
argue, the public does not participate in the rule-of-law (i.e., they do not report crimes to
authorities) and because of this crimes continue to go unpunished and there is no deterrence for
would-be-criminals. In Chapter 2, I describe the history of the rule-of-law institutions in Mexico
and their many attempts at reform. I show that despite many efforts at gaining trust, perpetual
corruption and inefficiencies ensured that these institutions did not succeed in achieving public
trust. I argue that trust is the key variable that needs to be obtained if the current reform effort is
to accomplish its goals of violence reduction.
In Chapter 3, I introduce a statistical model which offers evidence for the claim that trust
in institutions is a necessary component for the reform effort. Specifically, the model predicts
that when states have trust in the institution, the reform effort will reduce violence to a greater
extent than when states have illegitimate institutions. This supports my theory that the judiciary
needs to seek to gain trust if the reforms are to work in reducing violence. I show that when a
police force and justice system lack trust, people are less active participants in the rule-of-law
(e.g., calling police, cooperating with courts as witnesses, etcetera). This lack of participation
spurs impunity as more crimes go unreported and unprosecuted. This reduces the disincentives
for criminal behavior. To be sure other disincentives to homicide exist such as contradictory
religious or family values and fear of reprisals from opposing criminal organization. However,
this dissertation is focused more narrowly on the disincentive offered by political institutions: the
fear of legal sanction for criminal behavior. I show that in states where these political institution
lack trust, people do not participate in the institutions and impunity for violent crime increases,
squashing any criminal’s fear of legal sanction.
In Chapter 4, I discuss three case studies, Oaxaca, Mexico State, and Baja California, and
10
explore how they dealt with the reform process. Through information derived from field
research, surveys and interviews in Oaxaca, Mexico State, and Baja California in 2012 and 2013,
I illustrate that historical state-wide factors (such as histories of authoritarianism and clientelism)
have affected the state institutions’ trust. I show that this variance in state-wide trust proves
critical to whether the state is able to successfully implement the reform.
All three case studies have undergone the reforms; however, only in one case study, Baja
California, is there evidence of wide-spread trust in the institution and as a result, there is an
active interaction, in the form of reform and watchdog behavior, between citizens and the
institution. In the other two cases, persisting distrust created spectacular missteps in the
beginning of the reform process which act as a reinforcing barrier to regaining trust and spurring
public participation in the formal rule-of-law institutions (this is not to say that informal
institutions have not appeared to address public concern!).
These three case studies, Baja California, Oaxaca, and Mexico State implemented the
judicial reforms first in Mexico, even prior to the federally mandated reform.27 They were state
initiatives. This means that these cases have the benefit of allowing the most amount of time—
approximately five years—for the desired results of the reform to come to fruition. Ideally, by
looking at the experiences of these first reformers, the other states can gain some much needed
insights into the benefits and faults of the reform process. The three cases vary in terms of how
trust in the institution affected the reform effort. In this analysis, I seek to show that trust in the
institution can act as a barrier to the reform effort. By using cases with different histories of
democratization, and thus differing levels of institutional trust, I show the importance that this
27
Chihuahua also reformed along the same timeline as these early states, however, Chihuahua
was considered by the author too dangerous as a field work site at the time of writing the
dissertation.
11
trust in institutions has on current efforts of institutional reform.
Lastly, these cases offer evidence that the impact of institutional trust on violence is not
endogenous. While it may seem possible that violence impacts institutional trust just as much as
institutional trust impacts rates of violence, these cases show that the causal arrow only points in
one direction: institutional trust impacts violence. Baja California shows that a state with very
high levels of drug-related violence does not necessarily result in low institutional trust (indeed,
the case of Baja California illustrates a robust amount of institutional trust). Similarly, Oaxaca is
a state with little relative drug-violence yet has not seen any concomitant impact on institutional
trust.
In Chapter 5, I offer a concluding summary of what I have attempted to demonstrate, the
limitations of the argument, and suggestions for further research in this area. This analysis will
offer those interested in the rule-of-law or insecurity in Mexico with a wealth of information and
insights. It will be of particular interest to those interested in institutional reform efforts in
Mexico, on a theoretical and practical level. For academic, this study also has broader
implications beyond justice and beyond Mexico. At its core, it is a study of political institutions
and democratization. The following research suggests that institutional reform efforts are not a
panacea to problems in democratizing countries, nor are they a certain path toward institutional
consolidation or improvement. These benefits can only be achieved if preceded by a minimum
level of state-societal trust garnered through democratic development.
12
Chapter 1: How Rule-of-law Institutions Work
"In Mexico there is a real problem of distrust between citizens and entire justice system. For
starters, there is police corruption, inaction, and ineptitude, and also, criminal proceedings are
very long and very expensive. In many cases, when an offender is brought before a judge, he is
on the street three days later because the victim distrusts the system and does not appear before
the judge to confirm the charges.
- President Ernesto Lopez Portillo28
The main theory of crime control in the context of Mexico's institutional reforms is based
on increased probability of sanctions. The judicial reforms are meant to increase the likelihood
that criminal behavior receives sanctions. This belief has a basis in academic literature and longstanding bodies of work in criminology. Through over nearly a century of writing,
criminologists have debated the merits of the deterrence effect on crime. Put succinctly, the
deterrence effect is when courts are able to reduce future instances of crime by increasing the
likelihood of a legal sanction by the courts. This theory has its critics. Nagin (1998) and
MacCoun (1993) find that this deterrence effect exists but the impact of its influence is
negligible, while other scholars such as Paternoster (1987) find that it has no effect.29
In the course of exploring violence and justice in Mexico, I introduce an alternative view
of the judiciary. Rather than look at its ability to act as a deterrent to crime vis-à-vis probability
of sanctions, I explore their ability to reduce crime vis-à-vis trust in the institution. I adapt this
approach from political psychologist Tom Tyler who shows that courts and police in the inner
28
Ernesto López Portillo, “Datos Mundiales Sobre Los Sistemas de Justicia Criminal” (Office of
Justice Programs: Bureau of Justice Statistics, January 21, 2003). Translated by author.
29
Daniel Nagin, “Criminal Deterrence Research at the Outset of the Twenty-first Century,”
Crime and Justice 23 (1998): 1–42; R.J. MacCoun, “Drugs and the Law: A Psychological
Analysis of Drug Prohibition,” Psychological Bulletin 113 (n.d.): 497–512; Raymond
Paternoster, “The Deterrent Effect Ofthe Perceived Certainty and Severity of Punishment: A
Review of the Evidence and Issues,” Justice Quarterly 4 (1987): 173–217; Tom Tyler, Why
People Obey the Law (Princeton University Press, 2006).
13
cities of the United States can often deter crime by bolstering their status as legitimate and fair
institutions which motivate self-regulation and participation:
A trust-based strategy of policing increases cooperation with the law by drawing on
people’s feelings of responsibility and obligation. … To the degree that cooperation is
motivated by personal values, it is self-regulatory and does not depend upon the ability of
the authorities to effectively deploy incentives or sanctions to secure desired public
behavior.30
Tyler goes on to describe that police institutions can gain trust by having accepted procedures by
which they operate, not so much by having effective outcomes. By increasing the perceived
fairness and trust in the governing procedures of the institution, people are more likely to
voluntarily adhere to legal norms and participate in the rule-of-law. This is to say, the risk of
sanction (i.e., a criminal sentence) does not influence participation in the rule-of-law as much as
a respect for legal authorities and how they govern themselves. Before exploring the role of trust
in the institution in Mexico’s courts and police, I first describe the theoretical underpinning of
the common wisdom regarding violence reduction.
Legal Sanctions as a Disincentive to Criminal Behavior
Incentive-based theories in the social sciences are largely referred to as rational choice
theories. These theories posit that human behavior is dictated by a rational decision making
process which weighs costs and benefits of the action/decision. It is largely the product of the
behavioral revolution in the social sciences where scholars sought to utilize more parsimonious
and generalizable frameworks. Rational choice scholars believe that human behavior is dictated
by a set of ordered preferences and the ability to logically understand the available options. This
30
Tom Tyler, Why People Obey the Law, 88.
14
simplistic view of rational choice has evolved to now include imperfect information and the role
of society in altering one’s preference structure.
To apply crime and violence to this paradigm, theorists claim that people make the
decision to engage in criminal activities based on the incentives and disincentives of the crime
and the alternatives to the crime. For example, a potential thief would gauge the value gained of
the stolen item, the risk of prosecution, the value gained from any alternative path of income, and
the risk associated with the alternative prior to making the decision to engage in the activity.
However, often the thief is unaware of the actual value gained, possible alternatives, and even of
the amount of risk involved. In other words, it is often the case that people do not correctly
estimate an activity's worth or risk. Therefore, our decisions are based on our own—slightly
erroneous—calculations about the benefits and risks of the action.
Increasing one's belief that they will receive a legal sanction if they commit a crime has
been historically touted as the most salient deterrence to crime, 31 and indeed, this was a stated
focus of Mexico’s judicial reform.32 The judicial reform was enacted on the premise espoused by
legal scholars,33 that the ability of adversarial systems to reduce decision-maker bias in court
decisions is greater than inquisitorial systems of justice, and thus reduce the impunity rate.
31
Charles Tittle, “Crime Rates and Legal Sanctions,” Social Problems 16 (1969): 417.
32
Sergio Bogar Cuevas, “La Implementación Del Nuevo Sistema,” Nuevo Sistema de Justicia
Penal: Revista Semestral Del Consejo de Coordinación Para La Implementación Del Sistema de
Justicia Penal: Revista Semestral Del Consejo de Coordinacion Para La Implementacion Del
Sistema de Justicia Penal no. 3 (June 2011): 14–30.
33
Monroe Freedman, “Professional Responsibility of the Criminal Defense Lawyer: The Three
Hardest Questions,” Michigan Law Review 64 (1966); Monroe Freedman, Lawyer’s Ethics in an
Adversary System (Bobbs-Merrill Publishers, 1975); Lon L. Fuller, The Adversary System: Talks
on American Law, ed. Harold J. Berman (New York: Vintage Books, 1961); Lon L. Fuller, “The
Forms and Limits of Adjudication,” Harvard Law Review 92 (1978); Stephan Landsman,
Readings on Adversarial Justice: The American Approach to Adjudication (American Bar
Association’s Section on Litigation, West Group, 1988).
15
Decision-maker bias occurs unintentionally, when courts produce inconsistent conclusions, and
intentionally, when courts’ decisions are made with corrupt motives. By minimizing these
biases, the rule-of-law institutions set a more predictable and firm rule by law so that
perpetrators can expect punishment and the innocent can expect a trial free from unfair
persecution34. This is a classic application of an individual incentive-based theory: if the reform
can increase the perceived probability that punishment will be bestowed upon the guilty, then
perpetrators will be less likely to commit the crime.
Mexico is an ideal study to test whether an increased certainty of apprehension and legal
sanction is an effective deterrent to an individual’s decision to engage in violent crime because
of the police and judicial reforms aimed at this very factor. It is believed that the certainty of
apprehension and legal sanction will increase if the reforms are able to rid the system of
intentional and unintentional biases.35 Intentional biases come in the form of corrupt employees.
34
Freedman, “Professional Responsibility of the Criminal Defense Lawyer: The Three Hardest
Questions”; Freedman, Lawyer’s Ethics in an Adversary System; Fuller, The Adversary System:
Talks on American Law; Fuller, “The Forms and Limits of Adjudication”; Landsman, Readings
on Adversarial Justice: The American Approach to Adjudication.
35
Legal scholars have started to refute the claim that adversarial systems of justice are superior
to other forms of judicial systems because they reduce latent biases. Legal scholars such as
Carrie Menkel-Meadow35 have made a case that adversarial systems of justice do not reduce this
bias in the intended manner. They posit that in multicultural societies, the adversarial system
often produces discriminatory rulings toward disenfranchised or minority populations. This is to
say, the reform may not address latent biases in the system such as discrimination. If these latent
biases persist, then inefficiencies will persist since the wealthy and privileged groups will
continue to have a decreased certainty of legal sanction. This is a universal criticism of the
adversarial system of justice, not just of its application in Mexico. In the United States, many
critics contend that the adversarial system unintentionally produces biased conclusions because
of the impact of wealth on legal proceedings. Wealth is positively correlated with legal
representation that is more experienced which allows for a greater probability of convincing the
jury that their side—either defense or prosecution—is correct. Therefore the results from legal
proceedings may be unfair or inconsistent due to variations in the wealth of those involved.
Latent biases are often manifest in the system via the long-standing structures of racial and
ethnic inequality. While this is no doubt connected to the issue of wealth addressed previously,
it is also a distinct issue. Racial and ethnic minorities are often judged through a socially16
Employees, either in the courts or the police, who are susceptible to corruption, will decrease the
certainty of apprehension and/or legal sanction. Thus a reduction in intentional biases means a
reduction in corruption. This will produce an increased certainty of apprehension and legal
sanction. Unintentional biases come in the form of inefficient processes and latent biases. An
inefficient process can be the method by which the police apprehend and process a potential
criminal or the method by which the courts process and try the potential criminal. If the process
is inefficient there are myriad means through which a criminal can find a way out of
apprehension and/or sanction, thereby decreasing the certainty of apprehension/sanction.
Trust as Disincentive to Criminal Behavior
The legal sanctions mechanism described above is straightforward: legal sanctions deter
people from criminal behavior because the higher possibility of punishment is considered a
disincentive to criminal action. Trust, on the other hand, is not contingent upon an outcome (an
arrest/legal sanction); but rather, it affects security through the process by which outcomes are
delivered. In other words, people self-regulate their behavior in accordance with the institution
because of a feeling of obligation to a rule-of-law. This means that they participate in the rule-ofconstructed and biased lens. For example, in the United States young African American males
are frequently viewed by the majority as a group which engages in criminal behavior. Thus, the
results of criminal trials may be inconsistent if it takes less evidence to convince a jury that this
defendant committed a crime compared to an identical trial with a white defendant. These latent
biases can taint the certainty of apprehension and sanction when employees of the police or
judiciary—unknowingly—use stereotypes and/or discrimination based on wealth or ethnicity.
These biases towards some demographics increase the certainty of (misplaced) punishment for
the minority and lower classes, while decreasing the certainty of punishment for the majority and
wealthier classes.
17
law actively in accordance with the social norms established by the rule-of-law institutions. This
feeling of obligation spurred by trust in the institution is fostered by a citizen respecting their
operating protocols and considering them just.36
This type of procedural justice can create immediate compliance in the presence of
authorities but also long term compliance with the law in the absence of authorities. Studies
have found that in Chicago and in New York, even with an absence of authorities, people’s
tendency to engage in illegal behavior was more influenced by their respect for procedural
justice than by a fear of sanction.37 When asked whether one ought to obey the law even if it
goes against what they think is right, Tyler explains, “Americans are generally found to express a
strong sense of obligation to defer to law and to legal authorities.”38 Mexicans, on average, do
not hold this same reverence for the legal structures. Several judges in Mexico State interviewed
by the newspaper La Jornada stated that, “in countries such as the United States or England,
where oral trials have been used for some time, the adversarial model is effective because there
is credibility and respect for the police force and prosecutors in those countries.”39
According to Cleary and Stokes (2009), the lack of trust in the political institutions is
often a result of poor historical performance.40 Histories of corruption, mistreatment and even
torture plague the rule-of-law institutions in Mexico. These practices feed mistrust toward the
police and courts and non-participation in the rule-of-law. A cursory glance of the petitions
36
John D. McCluskey, Police Requests for Compliance: Coercive and Procedurally Just Tactics
(LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2003); Tom Tyler, Why People Obey the Law.
37
Tom Tyler, Why People Obey the Law, 89.
38
Ibid., 88.
39
Alfredo Méndez and Jesús Aranda, “Magistrados Rechazan Juicios Orales; Preferible
Capacitar Personal, Señalan,” La Jornada, December 13, 2007,
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/12/13/index.php?section=politica&article=009n1pol.
40
Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism.
18
before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission illustrates the extent of these dark
histories. These complaints suggest that the mistreatment and malfunctioning of institutions is
wide-reaching, encompassing courts, penitentiaries, State police, Immigration officers, and more.
The Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) and the Human Rights Center of the
Montaña filed a petition to the Human Rights Commission in 1998 for the government’s “alleged
kidnapping and torture perpetrated against Luis Gonzaga Lara, Magencio Abad Zeferino
Dominguez and Miguel Antonio Zeferino Aquino, as well as alleged acts of intimidation against
Gloria Eufracia Gonzaga Campos, Hermilia Gonzaga Campos, Pedro Gonzaga Lara, Costantina
Uriozo Hernández, Antolito Gonzaga Urioso and María Isabel Aquino Reyes”.41 There are many
other similar cases, such as the petition of Asdrúbal Araujo Castillo for the alleged “deprivation
of liberty, torture, and threats by government agents” and “violations of due process and the right
to judicial guarantees” after his detention in 1999 for suspected robbery. 42
In 2001 and 2002, Immigration Station of the National Immigration Institute in the
Federal District detained a citizen of the Dominican Republic, in transit through Mexico to the
United States. In custody, Luis Castillo Sepúlveda alleges he “was the victim of consistent
torture in physical, verbal, and psychological aggression by uniformed immigration and police
officials, which had seriously injured him.”43 The reports of serious injury and even deaths in
prisons are also rampant. One such petition to the Human Rights Commission by a 68 year old
inmate stated that he was refused medical attention in response to his serious health problems
41
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Report No 130/09” (Organization of
American States, November 12, 2009), 130.
42
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Report No 61/21” (Organization of American
States, March 19, 2012).
43
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Report No 52/09” (Organization of American
States, March 27, 2009).
19
and that two other people had already died of similar neglect.44
This historical pattern leads to a resistance to trust the rule-of-law institutions. I
demonstrate in chapters to follow, regaining institutional trust is a critical component of rule-oflaw and responsive governance in general. Bo Rothstein in Social Traps and the Problem of
Trust illustrates that once societies lose trust in institutions and it becomes increasingly difficult
to regain that trust. In his analysis, he offers a solution: “the deliberate action of the state and its
leaders is crucial. Social trust comes from above and is destroyed from above. Simply put, they
must be able to send trustworthy signals that they will guarantee and respect the impartiality of
the relevant public institutions.” 45 This is similar to the approach taken by Cleary and Stokes
(2009a) where trust in institutions in based on a belief that the institution is impartial. They
show that citizens are able to trust institutions when they believe there is a modest amount of
horizontal accountability in place which would restrain the institution from future abuses.46
This is a different type of trust than the interpersonal trust espoused by Putnam’s classic
work in Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. 47 Whereas Putnam, and
the wave of social capital scholars following him, posit that interpersonal trust is the key to
democratic governance; more recent analyses (e.g., Rothstein 2005, Tyler 2006, Cleary and
Stokes 2009a, Tayler 2011) attribute successful democratic governance to institutional trust.48
44
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Report No 51/09” (Organization of American
States, March 27, 2009), 5.
45
Bo Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Series of Institutional Design
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
46
Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism.
47
Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993).
48
Brian Taylor, State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion After Communism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture
of Skepticism; Tom Tyler, Why People Obey the Law; Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem
20
Indeed, interpersonal trust can often have adverse effects on democratic governance when
manifested as mafias or clientelism (see Armony 2004, Cleary and Stokes 2009a, Cook, Hardin,
and Levi 2005, found in Cleary and Stokes 2009b).49 Other scholars, such as Margret Somers,
more fiercely criticize the interpersonal trust—social capital—approach, noting that it has
reduced sociological understanding of the group to a mechanical, economics-based paradigm that
does not actually consider socially-based concepts.
In the analysis to follow, I follow the scholastic lead of institutional trust scholars such as
Cleary and Stokes 2009a, Rothstein 2005, and Tyler 2006. I apply this paradigm to the specific
role of Mexico’s fragile rule of law. I do not analyze interpersonal trust. Along with the critics
listed above, I believe that interpersonal trust and the rule of law in Mexico is irreconcilably
complicated as the Narcos are at times closely knit within communities and yet also immensely
despised (while the same can be said of the police). The role of institutional trust on the other
hand appears to play a vital role in rule of law. In the chapters to follow, I provide evidence that
in Mexico, the rule-of-law institutions will not substantially affect the rate of crime until they
deal with the crisis of societal trust toward the institutions.
of Trust, 2005.
49
Matthew Cleary and Susan Stokes, “Trust and Democracy in Comparative Perspective,” in
Whom Can We Trust? How Groups, Networks, and Institutions Make Trust Possible, ed. Karen
Cook, Margaret Levi, and Russell Hardin, Series on Trust (Russell Sage Foundation, 2009);
Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism; Ariel Armony, The Dubious Link:
Civic Engagement and Democratization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Karen
Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi, Cooperation Without Trust, Series on Trust (Russell
Sage Foundation, 2005).
21
Chapter 2: A History of Mexico's Rule-of-law Institutions
“Only the poor and the stupid go to jail.”
- Alvaro Obregon, Mexican president (1920 - 1924)
The sweeping reforms implemented in 2008 during Felipe Calderon's presidential term
are more extensive than most reforms in Mexico's history; however, reform in itself is not rare.
Both the police and judicial institutions have received a number of legislative mandates to
change in modern history; all of which proved insufficient to obtaining trust in the institution. In
the paragraphs to follow I describe the history of the reform efforts in the Mexican rule-of-law
institutions. I begin with a discussion of the police reforms. The modern police reforms are
complimentary to the judiciary reforms in that they aid the facilitation of justice in the courts. As
described earlier, courts cannot function without a police force that functions according to the
same institutional rules regarding the collection of evidence and treatment of defendants.
A duel comparison of the histories of the reform efforts in the police and judiciary is
beneficial in revealing omnipresent patterns of corruption and inefficiencies. Both institutions
have suffered from a persistent trade-off between corruption and performance. This problem was
famously described by Samuel Huntington50 who found that in some developing countries, more
corruption was needed in order to overcome—streamline—the inefficient procedures of
cumbersome government institutions. Mexico has struggled with this trade-off in its police and
judiciary with the institutions either succumbing to full-blown corruption or poor performance.
50
Samuel Huntingon, Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale University Press, 1968).
22
Police
The policing institutions have long suffered from corruption, perpetually changing
boundaries, overlapping jurisdictions, and interagency squabbling. Responsibilities are not
clearly defined and there are duplicated lines of authority across agencies. Drug interdiction is
the best example of this, with the Navy, Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), the
Secretariat of the Interior, the Secretariat of Public Security (SSP), and state and local police
forces all having jurisdiction over this matter. This overlap creates a system abundant with
checks and balances which help to stymie corruption; however, it also causes confusion,
inefficiencies and interagency turf wars often ending just as brutal as the criminals’ turf wars.51
Mexico’s history with police reform has been an attempt to navigate this trade-off between less
corruption and better performance. The previous reforms to the police have largely failed to
achieve either of these qualities to an acceptable degree.
Mexico’s web of police forces has created a bureaucratic mess for anyone interested in
reforming the police in order to increase performance and streamline procedures. Often times, a
reorganization or attempt at coordination turns into a lack of oversight and eventually a hotbed of
corruption. There have been many attempts at reorganization in modern history: In 1995, the
National Security System was formed under the Interior Ministry to coordinate federal and state
51
An unfortunate development in the past five years in Mexico’s institutions is the embarrassing
gun fights in the streets between governmental agencies. On numerous occasions across Mexico,
different agencies (municipal police and state police, for example) will engage in a shoot-out.
These instances are always marred with suspicions of agency corruption; however, incompetence
is often considered as well. In one particularly tense situation in late 2012, a group of federal
police open fired on a van that contained members of the Mexican military and two members of
the U.S. government. It remains unclear whether it was a case of mistaken identity (the police
said they received a tip that the van was being used by narcos) or a case of corruption (the
military claimed that they clearly communicated their credentials through the car window prior
to the shoot-out).
23
activities. In 1998 the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) was created to ensure police
coordination across the nation. In 1999, the Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) was formed in
order to split the police from the Secretariat of Government (SEGOB). In 2001 the Federal
Judicial Police (PJF) was replaced by the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) in order to create a
less “reactive agency.” 52 These consistently changing boundaries and institutional structures did
not help to make the police more efficient. As described in one analysis: the central issue is the
sheer number of different agencies, “Mexico has several federal law enforcement departments,
thirty-one state authorities, and 2,438 municipal police forces.”53 Replacing one agency with
another has not helped to alleviate the bureaucratic red tape that exists with such of a conflated
web of institutions.
Attempts to reduce corruption in these institutions have not been successful either. In
1997, the National Institute for Combating Drugs (INCD) was abolished when the head of its
agency, José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, was found to be on the payroll of the Juárez cartel. The
agency was replaced by the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Health (FEADS). Just six
years later, in 2003, FEADS was itself abolished due to corruption. The appropriate balance
between streamlining agencies (for better performance) and putting checks and balances (to
counter corruption) is persistently difficult.
The newest police reforms have also been forced to deal with this inherent trade-off
between performance and corruption. The logic behind the creation of a federal police force is
52
George Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (Transaction Publishers, 2010),
112; “Security in Mexico” (RAND Corporation, 2009); “Procuraduría General de La República”
(Procuraduría General de la República), accessed February 17, 2010, www.pgr.gob.mx;
Benjamin Reames, “Police Forces in Mexico: A Profile” (USMEX 2003-04 Working Paper
Series; Center for US-Mexican Studies, May 15, 2003).
53
Ioan Grillo, El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 240.
24
that municipal-level police are much more susceptible to corruption because they are closer to
the local population. Furthermore, the multi-leveled (municipal-state-police) police structure
gave more opportunities for inefficiencies in operations to appear. The 2008 attempt at reform is
posited to have a good chance at achieving both better performance and less corruption. First
and foremost, the mandated changes are more wide-spread than previous attempts at reform.
Secondly, the monetary resources put into seeing the reform through are greater than ever before.
There have been protests and resistances along the way as would be expected with any
sweeping change. In order to address performance, the AFI was merged into the PFP to create
the new Federal Police (PF) and the Ministerial Police. This was done in order to synthesize the
web of overlapping agencies and put up one overseeing structure—the Federal Police. In one of
the first stages of federalization, large numbers of investigators were moved from the AFI to the
PFP, creating two new bodies, the Federal Police (PF) and the new smaller ministerial police
(PFM). See Figure 1 and 2 below.
Figure 1: Previous Police Structure
Attorney General Office
(PGR)
Secretariat of Public Security
(SSP)
Federal Agency of Investigation
(AFI)
Federal Preventative Police
(PFP)
25
Figure 2: Post-Reform Structure
Attorney General Office
(PGR)
Secretariat of Public Security
(SSP)
Ministerial Police
Federal Police
(PF)
This transition was resisted by hundreds of AFI officers who refused to separate from
their former home at the Attorney’s General Office in order to move under the SSP. Whether
these protests over reorganization were a reaction to the change in agency power dynamics or a
testament to incompatible agency cultures, the transition persisted and the AFI “effectively
ceased to exist” and was officially replaced by the PFM on May 29, 2009. Before the
restructuring, the PFP prevented crime (meaning everything up until the act actually occurred)
and the AFI investigated crime (meaning everything after the act had occurred). After parts of
the AFI joined the PFP and created the new PF, the agency gained the power to conduct criminal
investigations after the crime occurred. Even though the PF has the ability to investigate crimes,
the ministerial police is still the main investigatory organ and ultimately decides who continues
with each investigation. The idea behind this reorganization was to give a unified police force,
housed under the SSP, access to both PGR and SSP resources. 54
I show in the following chapter that the reforms have not yet been able to reduce
corruption. Many actors in Mexico, tired and disgusted by the violence, have started to give up
on such fundamentals as corruption-free institutions and instead search for the quickest way to
54
Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?, 112; “Security in Mexico”;
“Procuraduría General de La República”; Reames, “Police Forces in Mexico: A Profile.”
26
reduce violence. Veteran journalist, Ioan Grillo, for instance offers support for the reform despite
the fact that it may not reduce corruption:
“[S]uch a reform could be a key factor in pulling Mexico away from the brink. Even if
drugs are eventually legalized, a single police force would be a better mechanism to fight
other elements of organized crime, such as kidnapping. The approach has many critics.
Some argue it would only streamline corruption. But even that would be a better thing
for peace. At least corrupt cops could be on the same side instead of actively gunning
each other down.”55
I argue that this narrow view similarly omits trust. Even with improved performance in fighting
crime, allowing persisting corruption in the institutions hinders any attempt to gain trust in the
institutions.
The policy makers who designed the federalization of the police force did not entirely
ignore corruption. In fact, many of the resources devoted to the police reform are destined for
professionalization. Professionalization is believed to be the secret to stopping corruption and
bolstering trust. It is believed to turn loose collections of police officers—taking bribes from
various elements of organized crime—into a unified institution that is proud of its mission and its
organization’s mores. On November 28, 2008 the National Council of Public Security (Consejo
Nacional de Seguridad Publica) created a model for professionalization of the police forces.
This plan, titled National Model for the Evaluation and Control of Trust, sets the guidelines and
goals for police professionalization. The National Center for Certification and Accreditation is
charged with implementing the plan56 and consults with representatives of the Department of the
Interior, Department of Public Education, Department of National Defense, The Military, The
55
Grillo, El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency, 240.
56
Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica: Centro Nacional de
Certificacion y Acreditacion, “Comunicado: Lineamentos Generales de Operacion,” May 4,
2010.
27
Department of Public Security, and the Attorney General's Office57.
President Calderon incentivized the professionalization of state and federal police forces
via federal funding to states (FASP58) and additional funding to certain large and violent
municipalities (Subsumen). The Executive Secretary of the National System for Public Security
released a 2010 evaluation of the FASP program. The evaluation of each state police force’s
progression in 2010 reveals mixed results. The indicators the federal government uses to
evaluate the forces fit within two large categories: professionalization and capacity.
Professionalization is intended to stop corruption within the police force. This includes:
regulatory framework, professionalization, and trust assessments. Capacity-based factors are
intended to increase performance within the police force. This includes size of force, equipment,
infrastructure, and information systems. The results of this report are in Appendix 1. Due to
large hiring sprees, most states have increased the size of their police force to adequate levels. It
varies from 1.17 police per 1,000 people in Coahuila to 10.25 per 1,000 people in the federal
district, but the average state has 3.82 police per 1,000 people. Most states have also updated
their information systems to adequate levels. Only Jalisco and Quintana Roo are below 50
percent implementation (they are at 42 percent and 29 percent respectively). However, Quintana
57
“Del Organo Consultivo Del Centro Nacional de Certificacion y Acreditacion (OC-CNCA)”
(Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública: Secretaria de Gobernacion,
n.d.), portal.secretariadoejecutivosnsp.gob.mx/normateca/docs/dgico.swf.
58
The FASP program has five components: 1. Recruit, train, select, and evaluate personnel
involved in public security tasks; 2. Equip the prosecutors, police, judicial police and prison
guards; 3. Establish and operate the national network of telecommunications and information for
public security matters as well as the national emergency telephone service; 4. Construct,
improve or expand the facilities used for the administration and enforcement of justice, prisons,
and training centers; 5. Monitor and evaluate the aforementioned programs. (Secretariado
Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica, “Fondo de Aportaciones Para La
Seguridad Pública (FASP),” accessed October 11, 2012,
http://portal.secretariadoejecutivosnsp.gob.mx/?page=fasp.)
28
Roo ranks near the top of progress in terms of police infrastructure. It has built 21 new
buildings, only surpassed by the federal district's 26 new buildings.
The police reform has stalled in one key regard: professionalization and control of
confidence. Each state is required to put their police force through a control of confidence test
which includes polygraph, toxicology, aptitude, psychological and socioeconomic evaluations.
If the officer passes these tests, they are certified, if not, they are removed from duty. In most
states, less than 25 percent of the police force is currently certified. The average percent of
certified police remained at a low 8 percent at the end of 2010. The states have either yet to enact
these tests or the officers have not passed the evaluations. In Michoacán, less than 10 percent of
the police force was able to pass the control of confidence.59 Only Aguascalientes, Baja
California, Coahuila, Colima, Chiapas, Guanajuato, Morelos, Nuevo Leon, Puebla, and
Querétaro received adequate marks in professionalization, yet none of these forced reached
beyond 30 percent trained.60
The Judiciary
In the end of the 20th century, decades of authoritarianism left the Mexican courts
plagued with corruption, inefficiencies, and a skeptical public. By the 1990s the need for judicial
reform had become evident. This is true of Mexico, but also the entirety of Latin America.
59
“Evaluation of Confidence Testing in Mexico,” Borderland Beat: Reporting on the Mexican
Cartel Drug War, June 1, 2011, http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/06/evaluation-ofconfidence-testing-in.html.
60
Sistema de Seguimiento y Evaluación, “Diagnostico de Las Corporaciones Policiales
Estatales.”
29
From 1991 to 2006, fourteen out of nineteen Latin American countries introduced reforms to
overhaul their criminal procedure and transition from an inquisitorial system to a mixedaccusatorial system.61 This sweeping regional trend was mainly the product of a group of
southern expert activists, comprised of Latin American lawyers, judges, and scholars, who were
committed to increased due process after the horrors of the authoritarian regimes in the 1980s
and 1990s.62 These judicial reforms took on many forms across Latin America but share certain
qualities, such as oral trials, putting the prosecutor in charge of the pre-trial investigation instead
of the judge, giving defendants more rights during the investigation, allowing plea bargaining,
and expanding the victim’s role in the process.63
In 1994, as these accusatorial-based systems swept across Latin America, Mexico
similarly implemented a large-scale restructuring of its judiciary. However, this system
remained inquisitorial and the reforms focused almost entirely on the Supreme Court. There
were four critical changes implemented in the 1994 reforms. First, they completed a
restructuring of the federal judiciary. Prior to 1994, the Supreme Court consisted of twenty-one
“Murder Impunity at 90% in Some Parts of Mexico,” Justice in Mexico News Report (TransBorder Institute, University of San Diego, January 2012),
http://justiceinmexico.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/2012-01-january-news-report.pdf.
61
Langer 2007 cites: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela as having
reformed.
62
Langer (2007) thoroughly explores the four antecedents to the reform. First, political
democracy hit Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s spurring an increased—domestic—call for
more due process. Second, in the 1990s crime in Latin America increased greatly, bringing
criticism to the performance of the justice system. Third, international institutions proliferated
the region in the 1980s and 1990s tying economic initiatives to mandates of less corruption and
more accountability. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly for Langer, the specific direction in
which to change policy came from the rise of a regional network of Latin American rule-of-law
scholars Maximo Langer, “Revolution in Latin American Criminal Procedure: Diffusion of
Legal Ideas from the Periphery,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 55, no. 4 (2007):
617–676.
63
Ibid., 618–619.
30
justices and five substitute or supernumerario judges, who were brought in when the caseload
was too large or justices were absent. However, in practice, these positions were often used to
allow packing of the court in politically sensitive cases.64 The 1994 reform decreased the number
of justices to eleven and removed all supernumerario judges.
Second, there was a redistribution of its administrative duties. To ensure that the smaller
court would be efficient, the administrative duties—previously the sole responsibility of the
Supreme Court—were distributed across branches of government. The reforms dictated that the
executive branch take over administrative tasks and appoint lower court judges. Third, there was
the expansion of constitutional protections via “constitutional controversies” and “constitutional
actions.” And fourth, there was a change in tenure for judges.65 The term limits of the eleven
remaining justices were set to fifteen years also in an effort to halt political manipulation.66
Furthermore all new appointments to the Supreme Court were subjected to two-thirds majority
ratification in the Senate. The criteria for appointments were made more stringent, restricting the
appointments to those who had served in certain political posts. The appointees also had to meet
stricter qualifications in experience.
Once again, the tension between inefficiencies and corruption is apparent. Increasing
performance (e.g., having supernumerario judges when the case load gets too big) is often
correlated with increasing corruption. Decreasing corruption (e.g., increasing congressional
oversight over the appointment of judges) is often correlated with decreasing performance.
Public discontent with the judiciary persisted after the 1994 reforms. In 2006, only 17 percent of
64
Harvard Law Review, “Liberalismo Contra Democacia: Recent Judicial Reform in Mexico,”
Harvard Law Review 108 (1995): 128, footnote 64.
65
Klesner Concha Cantu, Changing Structure of Mexico (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), 371.
66
Ibid.
31
the population believed that the courts were honest and just.67 While concerns of corruption were
ubiquitous, concerns of inefficiencies are more prevalent among populations who have personal
experience with the courts.68 The 1994 reforms were not extensive enough to placate public
discontent. However, the political will to completely reform structurally to an accusatorial
system did not come into existence until nearly 15 years later. In 1994, Mexico's single party
authoritarian regime still had the reins of power. The PRI had been slowly losing elections to
local offices throughout the 1980s and 1990s but the loss of the presidency did not occur until
2000.
The impetus for the 2008 reform came domestically but also continued to come as a
regional push to reform from the other Latin American countries to follow their example in
judicial reform. The strong regional push for adversarial type systems in Mexico began when
Julio Maier and Alberto Binder, the core of a Latin American network of expert legal advocates,
met with USAID administrators to pitch their case.69 These two convinced USAID that these
reforms were being domestically driven in Mexico and that the rule-of-law reforms would offer
many domestic and international actors a way to reach their diverse and individual goals in the
countries.70 When USAID was able to tie judicial reform to funding opportunities, Mexican
politicians were also enticed.
The domestic impetus for the adversarial reforms was born of the drug-violence starting
to ravage border towns and state capitals. Leaders in state and federal government saw that the
67
“El Irrespeto a La Ley En Mexico” (Parametria, 2006), www.parametria.com.mx.
68
Pilar Domingo, “Rule-of-law, Citizenship, and Access to Justice in Mexico,” Mexican
Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 15, no. 1 (1999): 173–174.
69
Langer, “Revolution in Latin American Criminal Procedure: Diffusion of Legal Ideas from the
Periphery,” 649.
70
Ibid., 650.
32
rule-of-law institutions still suffered from corruption and bad performance despite the reforms of
the previous decade. They mandated a state-by-state reform of the justice systems from an
inquisitorial system to a mixed-adversarial system. This adversarial system is hypothesized to
create a more impartial court. In adversarial systems, the defense and prosecution each plead
their case and the court acts as a moderator. In inquisitorial systems, the court is a more active
player involved in investigating the facts. The reform will introduce oral trials into the courts,
less discretion in the public prosecutors’ offices in prosecuting, and less discretion among judges
in sentencing. All of these changes are thought to reduce corruption and increase performance:
increasing the predictability that criminals are prosecuted.
Oral and public trials ensures that the process of justice provision is transparent to
society, thereby, exposing the actors and processes involved to public scrutiny. For example, if a
prosecutor has a malicious intent to incarcerate a defendant, his or her attempt at doing so can be
criticized by society at large; whereas under the previous system, such manipulation of justice
provision occurred behind closed doors. The case of Rubi in Chihuahua is a good example of
how this transparency inherent in the reformed institution translates into accountability. One of
the first oral trials in Chihuahua related to the murder of a young girl. The defendant, Sergio
Barraza, confessed to many people and described the location of the body. He was found not
guilty. The mother of the deceased, Marisela Escobedo, loudly protested the court's ethical
behavior in the case, and on December 16, she was shot to death. The suspect in the murder case
of Rubi’s mother is the same Sergio Barraza.
Under the previous system, trial and courtroom information was not disclosed. Trials
occurred behind closed doors and the public, and sometimes even the defendant, did not know
how a ruling was determined, what evidence was presented, or what actors were involved.
33
Conversely, transparency is the corner-stone of the new system and is seen as the biggest
guarantor of a non-corrupt institution. It ensures that interested parties can oversee the provision
of justice (e.g., who is involved in the trial, what evidence is presented). This transparency
allowed the public to monitor the details of the Rubi trial and the subsequent Marisela case.
Society reacted with outrage. The public expressed outrage of the judges’ initial error in the
Rubi case, and its horrendous consequences. These citizens turned watchdogs pushed the
judiciary to impeach the three judges: Rafael Boudid, Catalina Ochoa, and Nezahualcoyotl
Zuniga, for misconduct and negligence in learning the new system.
The judges claimed in an appeal of their impeachment that the defendant was set free as a
result of improper police procedure in obtaining the confession: the defendant's confession to the
police was made without a lawyer present and was thus dismissed. The appeals court agreed on
this regard, but ruled that the judges should not have dismissed his confessions to other people
when not in custody and they should not have dismissed his explanation of the location of the
body.71 Alonso Gonzales, Mexican lawyer and director of current rule-of-law reform initiatives
lead by the American Bar Association, states that this case, while tragic, is a great example of
how the reformed structure provides increased transparency, and thus, new accountability
measures for society to punish corruption and misconduct.72 However, I show in the following
chapter that reform as a mechanism to reduce corruption, while logical in theory, has not had this
effect throughout all of the reformed judiciaries.
In the following chapter, I refocus attention on the forgotten characteristic of political
institutions: trust. I demonstrate quantitatively that the reform only succeeds in reducing
71
Mark Stevenson, “Mexico Shock Verdict Puts Legal Reform on Trial,” UT San Diego, January
21, 2011, www.utsandiego.com.
72
Alonso Gonzales Villalobos, Interview. Mexico, D.F., October 15, 2012.
34
violence when the institution which is reformed holds trust. I draw attention away from thin
institutional reform attempts which fixate on major structural changes to reduce corruption and
better performance. Instead, using data compiled from government and non-government
sources, I make a case for a focus on trust in order to reduce violence. In Chapter 4, I then
explore how these relationships manifest themselves in my three case studies, Oaxaca, Mexico
State and Baja California, using data and information gathered from local government sources
during field research in 2012 and 2013. By comparing these very different local stories, I am
able to demonstrate how the 2008 judicial reform can reduce violence but only under certain
situations—when trust in the institution exists.
35
Chapter 3: Statistical Evaluation of the Rule-of-law Reforms
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”
- George E. P. Box73
Hypotheses
The previous reforms in Mexico were implemented in an effort to decrease the rate of
impunity in the country. In modern times, the judiciary and police in Mexico have not offered
society a rule-of-law. The institution has consistently failed to achieve its basic goals of
prosecuting those responsible for crimes in Mexico and addressing societal grievances in an
impartial manner. Previous reform efforts have tried to accomplish these goals by reducing
corruption and increasing efficiencies. As discussed in the previous chapter, addressing both of
these aspects simultaneously proved difficult. The recent reforms have come about as the most
ambitious set of changes in modern history. The policy makers who championed these reforms
sought to finally reach the goal of ending impunity. This goal—while always present—became
much more important to obtain as the drug wars of the early 2000’s came into existence. These
drug wars increased violence to a wholly unacceptable level. With this new impetus for
reform—yet again—policy makers in Mexico’s 32 states started to implement the adversarial
reforms to the judiciary and professionalization of the police force.
In this chapter, I offer a statistical model which suggests that the reforms’ success in
violence reduction is contingent upon an increase in trust in the institution. When a population
does not have trust in the rule-of-law institutions, they do not participate in keeping a rule-oflaw. They do not call the police to report crimes nor file complaints with the courts. The goal
73
George E. P. Box and Norman Draper, Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces,
Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics (Wiley, 1987), 424.
36
of the reform effort is to decrease impunity (i.e., police and courts are able to apprehend and
sentence those who convict crimes) and thusly deter further violence. I show that the reforms are
only partially successful in reaching the goal of violence reduction because of the persisting
mistrust in some areas of Mexico. A more tailored approach is needed.
Before discussing the statistical model, I first explore the issue of how trust deters crime
vis-à-vis impunity and how a focus on trust can differ drastically from a focus on performance
and/or corruption. In the following diagrams, I aim to illustrate how impunity can often be a
misunderstood concept which is easily susceptible to (intentional and unintentional) statistical
manipulation. The key issue is that many crimes go unreported and authorities are therefore
unaware of the true impunity rate. I posit that shallow institutional reform based on performance
and corruption attempts to decrease the percent of known crimes that go unpunished while a
focus on trust in the institution attempts to decrease the percent of unreported crimes.
A recent Justice in Mexico report on impunity in Mexico quotes the president of the
Citizens’ Council for Public Safety and Justice in Mexico (Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad
Pública y la Justicia Penal), Antonio Ortega, stating that the rate of impunity in Mexico in 2012
was between 80 and 90 percent per each state.74 The overall impunity rate—defined by number
of homicides investigated by police and sentenced in court divided by the total number of
homicides—has been slowly climbing over the past decade from 67 percent in 2002 to 81
percent in 2010.75 However high this may seem, this is likely underreported.
74
“Murder Impunity at 90% in Some Parts of Mexico,” Justice in Mexico News Report, January
2012, http://justiceinmexico.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/2012-01-january-news-report.pdf.
75
“Seguridad y Justicia Penal En Los Estados: 25 Indicadores de Nuestra Debilidad
Institucional” (Mexico Evalua: Centro de Analisis de Politicas Publicas, AC, March 2012).
37
Figure 6: Impunity Interaction of Performance and
Participation
Figure 4:Impunity - Performance
Figure 3: Impunity - Status Quo
Figure 5: Impunity - Participation
These diagrams describe how changes in an institution,
either increased performance via structural reform, or
increased participation via trust, impact its ability to act
as a deterrence via the presumed impunity rate. In
Figure 3 -6 the outer circle A represents the entire world
of crime that exists in a state; the smaller circle B
represents all of the crimes known to the authorities;
and the smallest circle C represents all of the crimes that
the authorities are able to investigate and prosecute. I
use these three circles to graphically illustrate my
central theory that the reform effort needs to take into
account extant trust in the institution. After these
graphical illustrations, I provide the results of my
statistical model which empirically tests whether the
success of the reform effort to combat crime will vary
for states with different levels of trust in the institution.
First, I further explore the difference between a reform
that encompasses trust and one that does not in Figures
3 - 6. In Figure 3, there are 18 total crimes (represented
by dots), 10 of these are known to authorities, and 7 are
prosecuted. The real impunity rate is 61 percent
[measured by (A – C) / A or (18 – 7) / 18]. Yet it is
difficult to obtain this statistic since the eight crimes
38
outside of circle B do not exist in any dataset. Instead, impunity is measured at 30 percent [(B –
C) / B or (10 – 7) / 10] without the incorporation of these eight unreported crimes. In Mexico,
previous attempts at reform have focused on institutional performance, making the rule-of-law
institutions more efficient in prosecuting crimes that they know about. This is shown in Figure 4
where circle C increases relative to B. The reforms have not focused on increasing the size of
circle B relative to A (making the rule-of-law system penetrate a wider area of society) as shown
in Figure 5. Figure 6 shows both a performance minded reform effort along with wider reaching
(more participatory) rule-of-law institutions. The difference between Figure 4 and Figure 6 is the
difference between a shallow institutional reform and a deeper reform that focuses on the
institutions ability to penetrate society through trust in the institution.
I hypothesize that in many states, circle B remains small because of a lack of societal
participation. Nationally, from 2002 to 2009, the percentage of citizens who said they did not
report a crime that they witnessed increased from 73 percent to 78 percent of the population.76
The main reason is because they thought that this was a waste of time. This speaks to the
mistrust of the system. When people are not willing participants in the rule-of-law institutions,
then unreported impunity persists.
In the following paragraphs, I show that the lack of trust in the rule-of-law institutions
has prevented the reforms from accomplishing their goal of violence reduction. I am not able to
address the mechanism—public participation in the rule-of-law—quantitatively because data do
not exist at a sufficient state-wide level to test this claim empirically. Instead, I address public
participation in Chapter 4 using survey data that I collected from three states during field
research in 2012 and 2013.
76
“Sexta Encuesta Nacional Sobre Inseguridad”; “Primera Encuesta Nacional Sobre Inseguridad
Public En Las Entidades Federativas.”
39
Research Design
Before discussing the quantitative model, it is important to first establish that the reforms
in Mexico were implemented randomly. If the reforms were not implemented randomly, then
the reform variable could in fact measure some other underlying quality. For instance, if the
reformed states happen to have reformed because they have quality X, then we couldn’t be
certain whether the reform or quality X helps to deter violence.
As of the beginning of 2011, a handful of states had not begun the reform process, some
were in the middle of implementing the reform, and a portion of states have the new adversarial
system functioning. Figure 7 below is a map of the progress of the implementation as of 2011,
provided by the Council for the Coordination of the Implementation of the Penal Justice System
(Consejo de Coordinación para la Implementación del Sistema de Justicia Penal).
Figure 7: Map of Judicial Reform Implementation Status - CCISJP
States that have the reformed judiciary in operation are colored in red. These states include:
40
Oaxaca, Mexico State, Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua, and Baja California. States that are
nearing completion of the reform, having completed some infrastructure and training, are in
yellow. These include: Yucatan, Puebla, Hidalgo, and Guanajuato. The remaining states had not
completed the requisite infrastructure and training to have SEGOB classify their judiciary as in
process of reform. For the purposes of the empirical model, only states that achieve “fully
operational” status (shown in red) are coded as reformed.
To be sure, other classifications of judicial implementation exist. Other governmental
agencies define the features of implementation differently, thus changing the list of states which
have “implemented” the reform. For example, Matthew Ingram conducted a study of the
criminal procedure reform in Mexico. He created an index based on state implementation in
relation to Chihuahua (the most reformed state).
Figure 8:
77
Map of Judicial Reform Status - Ingram77
Ingram, “Criminal Procedure Reform in Mexico: Where Things Stand Now.”
41
In Figure 8, Ingram measured at the Code of Criminal Procedure and its geographic
spread within the state as the most important aspect from which to judge implementation and
found that Baja California, Zacatecas, Mexico State, Nuevo Leon, Yucatan, and Morelos have
most fully implemented the reform (scoring over 80 out of 100 on the index). This varies from
CCISJP’s classifications in Figure 7 just slightly. Ingram’s index (based off of SETEC data and
80% correlated to SETEC’s own index of reform implementation78) does not include Oaxaca and
Durango in the highest tier of implementation while CCISJP does. Ingram’s index ranks
Durango in the tier below this group (scoring 72 out of 100) and Oaxaca two tiers below this
(scoring 57 out of 100). Oaxaca’s faltering on this index is due to the large areas of the state still
lacking the judicial reform. Because I use CCISJP’s index at the municipal-level, I account for
part of Ingram’s system of classification by also including the geographic spread of the reform as
part of the operationalization.
Regardless of variations in the definition of implementation, it is clear that the judicial
reform process was not geographically motivated. States from the south, central, and north have
implemented the reforms. Education and income are also not a factor: poor, less-educated
Oaxaca is included among the reformed states as is wealthy, industrialized Baja California.
Contrary to what some assume, the reforms were also not implemented based on who received
US funding for the reforms. Oaxaca and Chihuahua began the reform process a couple of years
prior to the federal mandate in 2008 and had been working with USAID. However, other states
that do not receive programs and training from USAID were also among the first reformers, such
78
Matthew Ingram, “Criminal Procedure Reform in Mexico: Where Things Stand Now,” Woodrow Wilson Center’s
Mexico Institute (January 2013): 10.
42
as Zacatecas.79
One might also assume that violence and impunity rate spurred the reform process.
States that implemented the reforms first did not decide to do so because of higher-than-average
or lower-than-average impunity rating. Theoretically, both scenarios seem possible. A state
could have an exceptionally high impunity rating and policy-makers decide that they need to do
something about the lack of justice—so they push through reforms to the judicial system. On the
other hand, a state could have an exceptionally low impunity rating and policy makers decide
that they should capitalize on the well-functioning system by making even more improvements
to the judiciary. A quick glance at overall impunity statistics show that, in 2007, those states that
had reformed their judiciary had an average of 83 percent of crimes go unpunished (not brought
before court). 80 Those states without a reformed judiciary also had an average of 83 percent of
crimes go unpunished.81 The fact that impunity is the same for both reformed and unreformed
groups suggests that this was not a driving factor to the reforms. That same year, policy makers
in Mexico City constitutionally mandated that all states follow these early states’ lead and reform
their judiciary by 2016. The stated purpose for the constitutional reform was the nationally high
impunity rate. To be sure, 83 percent of crimes going unpunished is an unacceptable statistic
(and many sources estimate it to be much higher due to the unreported crimes). However, I
would like to be clear that the high impunity rate was the stated reason for the federally
mandated judicial reforms, not the stated reason for the first reformers’ decision to reform prior
to this mandate.
79
Gonzales Villalobos, Interview. Mexico, D.F.
80
“ICESI - Estadísticas Sobre Inseguridad Pública,” accessed September 16, 2011,
http://icesi.org.mx/estadisticas/estadisticas_encuestasNacionales.asp.
81
Ibid.
43
I also find that violence levels are similar for reformed and unreformed states when the
first states started to implement their judicial reform. As shown in Table 1, unreformed
municipalities and reformed municipalities had similar levels of drug-related homicides in 2007
and 2008. This suggests that states that were more violent than average did not implement the
reforms at a faster rate in order to quell the violence. It also suggests that states that were less
violent than average did not implement the reforms at a faster rate in order to capitalize on a time
of peace.
Table 1: Reforms and Average Number of Homicides per Municipalities82
Reformed (205)
Unreformed (959)
2007
2
3
2008
6
6
In summary, I argue that the implementation of the first wave of reforms did not occur
throughout Mexico in in accordance with common theories mentioned. I assume that these states
do not share any underlying quality that made them first reformers. Instead, I assume that my
model will test the impact of trust and reform on violence, without being complicated by
omitted, latent variables.
Modeling the Role of Trust in the institution in Crime Reduction
82
Presidencia de la Republica, Homicidios.
44
To test the impact of trust on crime, I run a zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB)
model. Drug-related crime is operationalized as the number of drug-related homicides in each
municipality from 2007 to 2009. These data are a count instead of a continuous variable because
they have a poisson distribution. However, poisson models often fail to account for over or under
dispersion in the dependent variable, and as a consequence, produce inefficient estimates. I use
the negative binomial model to account for this incorrect dispersion. To test whether this was
necessary, I conducted a Vuong test which suggests that a negative binomial model was superior
to a poisson in this case. I use a zero-inflated negative binominal to account for the excess zeros
in the dependent variable that may be due to an alternative process.83 In many municipalities, no
drug-related homicides exist. This can mean one of two things: 1. No drug-related crimes exist
because the rule-of-law institutions are working to keep illicit activity at a minimum, or, 2. There
is never any illicit activity for the rule-of-law institutions to address. The zero-inflated model
controls for the excess of zeros and alternative processes at work by separating the regression
into positives and “sometimes zero” values in one group and “always zero” values in another
group. ZINB estimates a count model for the former and a binary logit predicting the “always
zero” group. Table 2 shows the output of a series of zero-inflated negative binomial regressions.
Note that the “always zero” group—those municipalities where there is no crime to keep at
bay—is separated out and run independently.
As mentioned previously, one problem with the ZINB model is that it does not regress
time-series data appropriately. It has trouble with time series correlation of the dependent
variable. Therefore, I run the data in a ZINB model but include fixed effects for each year.
83
I compared the results of a zero-inflated negative binomial model and negative binomial. The
zero-inflated model was superior in regards to the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and
Vuong test.
45
This essentially makes the ZINB model a cross-sectional analysis with more data points than a
one year cross-section.
The dependent variable is the number of drug-related homicides per municipality. The
counts range from zero to 2,738 deaths. The city of Ciudad Juárez was responsible for this high
value of 2,738 in 2010. These data are from the Office of the President in Mexico.84 They are at
the municipal level. I chose to lag the independent variables one year. This allows each year to
test whether the independent variables had an impact on the following year’s number of
homicides. Thus, the independent variable values for 2007 are matched with the homicide count
of 2008; the independent variable values of 2008 are matched with the homicide count of 2009;
and the independent variable values of 2009 are matched with the homicide count of 2010.
Figure 8 below shows the distribution of the dependent variable excluding zeros for
2010; the distribution for other years is similar. Approximately half of all municipalities have
not had one death from 2007 to 2010. And approximately half of all municipalities had fewer
than 100 deaths per year from 2007 to 2010. Fewer than 25 municipalities make up the highest
death category, containing death tolls of hundreds or thousands.
84
Presidencia de la Republica, Homicidios.
46
Figure 9: Count of Drug-Related Homicides per Municipality, 2010
Count of Drug-Related Homicides Per Municipality
100
0
50
Frequency
150
200
2010
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Drug-Related Homicide
160
180
200
I have also run this model with a dependent variable that includes all homicides, not just drugrelated homicides. I find there to be no substantial difference. The reason, I believe, is clear:
most contemporary homicides in Mexico are drug-related. The all homicides variable is
comprised of very few non-drug related murders. Furthermore, the reforms were intended to
specifically address the rising drug-related violence; therefore, I am mostly concerned with this
aspect of the crime in Mexico. Because of this, I chose to use ‘drug-related homicides’ instead
of ‘all homicides’ as the dependent variable going forward.
To measure the impact that the reforms in the police and courts had on violence, I include
two variables. One variable, Judicial Reforms, is given the value of “1” if the oral trial,
adversarial system is in effect (as defined in the law and by the government) and a “0” otherwise.
In 2007, there are no states that are operating a mixed-adversarial system. From 2007 to 2010,
seven states implemented the reform: Baja California, Chihuahua, Mexico State, Morelos,
47
Oaxaca, Nuevo Leon, and Zacatecas. For the year that the reform went into effect, and every
year after, the variable is a “1”. I should also note that this variable is at the municipal-level.
There are certain municipalities in reformed states that implement the reforms later. For
instance, Mexicali, Baja California implemented the reform in 2009 but Ensenada, Baja
California had not as of 2010. The data account for this municipal difference.
The other reform-based variable, Police Reforms, is given the value of 0 through 7 for
each “good” score on the seven requirements determined by the Executive Secretariat of the
National System of Public Security in its FASP evaluation.85 These numbers per state can be seen
in Appendix 1. This is a state-wide variable. Data at the municipal-level are not available.
To measure trust, I use data from LaPop.86 The survey asks respondents how much
confidence they have in each of their political institutions. The measure for trust in the judiciary
is the ranking between one and seven that the average person gives. From 2007 to 2010, the
average of all states for this variable equaled four. The state average per a given year range from
a ranking of one to five and a half. The measure for trust in the police is the ranking that people
in the state gave when asked how much confidence they had in the police, on a scale of one to
seven. The state averages per a given year range from one to five.
I suspect that reforms and trust interact with each other. These two interactions allow the
model to display the different impact of reforms on crime with illegitimate institutions and
institutions that contain societal trust. I predict that the reforms will have a greater impact on
reducing crime when there are institutions that contain trust. This is to say that the reforms to the
rule-of-law institutions will only work to reduce violence when the rule-of-law institutions have
85
See Appendix 1 and 2 for a clear illustration of this coding.
86
Vanderbilt University, Latin American Public Opinion Project (LaPop), n.d.,
www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop.
48
trust. When they do not, there will not be the same reduction in violence. To account for this, I
create two more variables measuring the interaction between reforms and trust.
I include three control variables in the model that are widely suspected to impact the
count of homicides: female-led households, percent of people who work in the informal
economy, and income.87 The first control variable, female-led household, is expected to have a
positive correlation with homicide. “Broken” homes are hypothesized to lead to criminal
behavior among children. This theory has penetrated academia and public discourse for over a
century. Just recently in 2010, Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary in The
United Kingdom, proclaimed that in the United Kingdom, children from “broken” homes are
nine times more likely to commit crimes than children from homes with two parents.88 “Broken”
homes—single parent households—have long been suspected of being a major environmental
driver of crime for a hundred years.89 I include this variable with data from Mexico’s census
bureau. 90 It measures the percent of homes per municipality that are led by a female. The average
87
I also included a measure of the number of MP agents per municipality but this variable was
automatically dropped due to collinearity.
88
Andy Bloxham, “Children from Broken Homes ‘Nine Times More Likely to Commit
Crimes’,” The Telegraph, November 4, 2010,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8109184/Children-from-broken-homes-nine-timesmore-likely-to-commit-crimes.html.
89
R. G. Gordon, “Delinquency in Relation to the Broken Home,” National Institute of Health:
Archives of Disease in Childhood 68, no. 12 (April 1937): 111–117; Thomas Monahan, “Familiy
Status and the Deliquent Child: a Reappraisal and Some New Findings,” Social Forces 35
(1957): 250–258; Donald Peterson and Wesley Becker, “Family Interaction and Delinquency,”
in Juvenile Delinquency, ed. Herbert C. Quay (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co, n.d.); Toby
Jackson, “The Differential Impact of Family Disorganization,” American Sociological Review 22
(October 1957): 505–512; Karen Wilkinson, “The Broken Family and Juvenile Delinquency:
Scientific Explanation or Ideology?,” Social Problems 21, no. 5 (October 1974): 726–739; John
Gilling, Social Pathology (New York: Appleton-Century Co., Inc, 1933).
90
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia (INEGI), Sistema Estatal y Municipal de Bases
de Datos (Mexico), accessed November 9, 2012, www.inegi.org.mx.
49
municipality in Mexico from 2007 to 2010 had 17 percent of all households led by single
mothers. The values range from 0 percent to 43 percent.
The second control is the percent of people who work in the state’s informal economy.
The percent of employment completed in the informal economy is hypothesized to positively
impact homicide because people who are not connected to the government institutions—those
who are more marginalized—are less likely to utilize government institutions to report crimes
and file complaints in the courts. 91 Susan Strange’s Retreat of the State created a framework to
show that a global world economy and neoliberal policies have given rise to non-state authorities
such as criminal elements, international organizations and transnational corporations to the
detriment of the traditional source of authority, i.e. the state.92 Equally important is the work of
Guillermo O’Donnell who gave rise to the term “browning” to describe areas of a polity where
the state has retreated and private interests run amuck.93 These works show that areas where
legitimate institutions are absent, criminal elements will fester and exploit this abandonment. In
an anthropological work on narcotrafficking in Mexico, Victoria Malkin illustrates how people
in the territories that were abandoned by the neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s were the ones to
subject involvement in an extensive narcotics trafficking organization. The driving factor is not
solely the feeling of abandonment, but also the push to be entrepreneurial and expectations of
fast wealth which accompany these reforms. The dearth in state presence allowed narcotic
traffickers to influence the growing strategies of farmers and link these local economies to the
91
Bo Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust (Cambridge University Press, 2005).;
Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
92
Strange, The Retreat of the State.
93
Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Institute of
International Studies, 1973).
50
drug trade.94 In order to control for the increase in homicides due to this lack of state presence, I
include a measure of the percent of people in the municipality who work in the informal
economy. The average municipality in Mexico from 2007 to 2010 had approximately 30
percent of the people in the informal economy. The data range from a low of 16 percent to a
high of 39 percent. These data are provided by Mexico’s census bureau.95 The variable is at the
municipal level.
Lastly, I also include income as a control variable. An increase in income is expected to
decrease homicide. This is hypothesized because people will be less likely to risk illegal
behavior if they have a means of producing income in a legitimate industry. I specifically looked
at average taxed income per person within each municipality. I used taxed income to avoid
correlation with the previous variable, percent of people who work in the informal economy.
From 2007 to 2010 in Mexico, the average taxable income in the municipalities was 198,798
pesos (approximately 15,531 US dollars). The data range from municipalities with, on average,
no taxable income to municipalities that average 6,614,991 pesos (approximately 516,796 US
dollars). These data are also provided by Mexico’s census bureau.96 The variable is at the
municipal level.
Table 2 on the following page shows the results of the ZINB models that tests whether
these variables impact the number of homicides in Mexico today. Models 1 through 3
94
Malkin, “Narcotrafficking, Migration, and Modernity in Rural Mexico.”
Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Institute of
International Studies, 1973).
95
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia (INEGI), Sistema Estatal y Municipal de Bases
de Datos.
Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Institute of
International Studies, 1973).
96
Ibid.
51
incorporate different combinations of the control variables while Models 4 through 6 incorporate
different combinations of the theoretical variables. I find that the best fit models are Models 5
and 6. These models use all control variables and account for the judicial reform and police
reform independently.
52
Table 2: Series of ZINB models estimating the impact of reform and trust on homicides
Model 1
Model 2
Model 3
judicial reform
32.08***
(13.43)
34.26***
(15.02)
17.52***
(7.62)
4.37*
(2.34)
trust in the judiciary
0.76***
(6.49)
0.77***
(6.71)
0.15
(1.29)
-0.29***
(-4.23)
judicial reform X trust
-7.78***
(-13.46)
-8.35***
(-15.12)
-4.23***
(-7.46)
-1.14*
(-2.36)
police reform
-0.20
(-0.39)
0.63
(1.34)
1.38***
(3.73)
1.10***
(4.03)
trust in the police
-1.52***
(-12.19)
-1.32***
(-10.96)
-1.07***
(-9.31)
-0.20**
(-2.72)
police reform X trust
0.33
(1.89)
-0.01
(-0.02)
-0.39**
(-2.99)
-0.33***
(-3.36)
15.99***
(18.11)
14.62***
(16.67)
5.47***
(8.01)
5.60***
(8.13)
5.88***
(8.64)
-0.17***
(-21.40)
-0.05***
(-9.70)
-0.06***
(-10.78)
-0.07***
(-12.11)
0.01***
(17.47)
0.01***
(17.23)
0.01***
(17.31)
pct broken homes
pct informal economy
average income
Model 4
Model 5
Model 6
Year = 2008
1.38***
(13.38)
1.12***
(11.11)
0.86***
(9.31)
0.49***
(6.44)
0.50***
(6.64)
0.54***
(6.75)
Year = 2009
-0.27
(-1.56)
-0.04
(-0.27)
0.51***
(3.29)
0.95***
(12.77)
0.86***
(10.32)
0.80***
(6.35)
-20.00***
(-13.27)
-13.16
(-0.98)
-13.13***
(-5.65)
5.71**
(2.63)
5.46*
(2.49)
5.39*
(2.50)
0.04
(1.32)
-0.04*
(-2.53)
-0.05**
(-3.10)
-0.05***
(-3.30)
-0.01***
(-4.87)
-0.01***
(-4.61)
-0.01***
(-4.69)
13724.6
13792.4
13516.9
13602.9
13490.2
13576.2
Inflate
pct broken homes
pct informal economy
average income
Aic
Bic
p < .01 ***
17730.0
17813.1
p < .05 **
17421.8
17511.8
16711.1
16815.0
p < .10 *
53
In Model 5 and Model 6, all variables are significant at the .10 level. In the pages to follow I
discuss Model 5 and Model 6 in detail.
Below I present the results of Model 5 using incident rate ratios for easier interpretation.
Table 3: ZINB Model showing the Impact of the Judiciary on the Count of Drug-Related
Homicides in Mexico, 2007 -2009
IRR
Std Error P Value
Trust in the judiciary X Reform
.32
.15
.01
Judicial Reform (1 = yes, 0 = otherwise)
79.21
147.83
.01
Trust of Judiciary
.75
.05
< .01
Pct of Female-led Households
271.15
186.85
< .01
Pct in Informal Economy
.94
.01
< .01
Income
1.00
.01
< .01
2008 dummy
1.65
.12
< .01
2009 dummy
2.36
.19
< .01
Pct of Female-led Households
5.46
2.19
.01
Pct in Informal Economy
-.05
.01
< .01
Income
-.01
.01
< .01
Number of police officers
-.07
.17
<. 01
Always Zero Predictors
N = 3,440
Non Zero Observations = 1,799
Zero Observations = 1,641
The number of observations used in the model is limited by missing data. Income is the main
source of missing data. From 2007 to 2010, there are only 3,491 observations. This equates to
around 872 observations per year. There is no discernable pattern to the missing data other than
54
they tend to be less populated municipalities. I ran the model without this variable (increasing
the number of observations to 7,517 in total or 1,879 per year) and found similar results. I chose
to keep the variable in the model at the trade-off of a diminished number of observations.
All variables in the model are statistically significant. The interaction effects between reform
and trust are significant, which provides support for the theory discussed in the previous chapters
that trust hinders the ability of the reforms to have a deterrence effect on violence. I provide
interpretations of each estimate below.
I use three variables in the above model to measure the interactive impact of judicial
reform and trust on homicide: ß1(Trust in the judiciary X Judicial Reform), ß2(Judicial Reform),
and ß3(Trust in the judiciary). Because this is an interaction effect, these coefficients have
slightly different interpretations than non-interactive coefficients.
The trust in the judiciary variable estimates the impact on municipal violence when a
judiciary that is not reformed increases its trust by one point on the 7 point trust scale. This
coefficient is significant and suggests that a one point increase in trust (in non-reformed
municipalities only) will decrease the expected the number of homicides by a factor of .75 (p <
.01).
The judicial reform variable estimates the impact on municipal violence when a judiciary
that has no trust transitions from an unreformed system to a reformed system of justice. This
situation is not possible. Even the most despised judiciaries have some trust. This variable does,
however, indicate that reformed municipalities with extremely low levels of trust will become
more violent if they attempt reform without trust by a factor of 79. This suggests attempts at
reform should not occur in areas where there is no trust in the institution. In previous sections, I
illustrated that—prior to the reform—the reformed municipalities were similar to unreformed
55
municipalities in terms of violence. Thus, this difference in violence is a consequence of the
reform (not the other way around). Why would the reform make communities more violent in
areas where there is almost no trust? I believe that this is due to the perceived ability of behalf of
the narco-traffickers that they can “push back.” A reform in the judiciary or police threatens the
livelihood of organized narco-traffickers. They may have a desire to push-back against these
reforms by intimidating the local community and sending threats to the government through
violence. This unfortunately has been witnessed many times. In one of the most violent pushbacks seen in recent years, in 2006, a narco-trafficking organization known as La Familia killed
over 16 police officers in the span of three days for retribution of the apprehension of one of their
members, Arnoldo Rueda.97 Similarly, in 2012, a group of organized crime members exploded a
bomb in Tamaulipas, killing two policemen, in retaliation for the arrest and prosecution of one of
their members.98
On the other hand, when the judiciary or police has a high level of trust, the narcotraffickers may be more hesitant to push back against the reform using violence for fear that the
institution may be able to impose sanctions upon them for such an act. This lack of push-back in
reformed areas makes the level of violence in reformed municipalities and unreformed
judiciaries similar and lower than in those communities where there is no trust in the institution.
The interaction effect shows us that this difference in violence levels in reforms versus
unreformed municipalities diminishes when trust increases. At low levels of trust, reformed
municipalities will have more instances of violence than non-reformed municipalities. But for
each increase in trust, the difference in violence between reformed and unreformed
97
Grillo, El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.
98
STRATFOR, “Mexico: Bombing Retaliation For Gang Arrests - State Attorney General,”
STRATFOR Sitaution Reports, July 3, 2012.
56
municipalities will decrease by a factor of .32. When municipalities have average or high levels
of trust in the institution, the reform will reduce violence.
In order to more specifically show what effect the reform would have on violence when
there is high levels of trust in the institution, I ran a series of predicted probabilities (using
prvalue command developed by Scott Long99). These predicted probabilities show the predicted
probability of a certain outcome (e.g., homicide = 3) for different values of the independent
variables. For high levels of trust (ranking = 7), and all other variables set at their mean, I
computed the change in the predicted probability of a count change in homicide for reformed and
unreformed municipalities. I also completed this computation for low levels of trust (ranking =
3) with all other variables set at their mean.
For highly trusted judiciaries, I found that when a municipality implements the judicial
reform (reform changes from 0 to 1), the predicted probability of increasing from zero deaths to
one death goes from 18 percent to 3 percent. The predicted probability of moving from one
death to two deaths decreases from 10 percent to 2 percent. The predicted probability of moving
from two deaths to three deaths goes from 6 percent to 2 percent. When a reform is
implemented, the predicted probability of a municipality moving from three deaths to four deaths
decreases from 4 percent to 2 percent. The predicted probability of moving from four to five
deaths decreases from 2 percent to 1 percent. This difference continues to lessen. The predicted
probability of moving from eight to nine deaths is nearly identical in reformed and unreformed
municipalities with high rates of trust (both at 1 percent). These values are listed in Table 4.
For judiciaries with low trust, I found that when a municipality implements the judicial
reform (reform changes from 0 to 1), the predicted probability of increasing from zero deaths to
99
J. Scott Long and Jeremy Freese, Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables
Using Stata (Stata Press, 2006).
57
one death increases from 13 percent to 39 percent. This is the push-back scenario discussed
above. The predicted probability of additional deaths decreases for both reformed and
unreformed municipalities until the two have very similar predicted probabilities of nine deaths
(1.1 and 1.8 respectively). This implies that reform and legitimacy are only really effective at
impacting lower levels of violence. High-levels of violence, such as those seen in Ciudad Juarez,
are very anomalous and often explained by additional processes and factors.
Table 4: Changes in predicted probabilities of homicide given levels of trust in the
institution100
HIGH TRUST (=7)
Expected NO
value of Reform
Reform
homicide (= 0)
(= 1)
LOW TRUST (=3)
NO
Reform Reform
(= 0)
(= 1)
1
18.3
3.3
13.1
39.2
2
10.2
2.4
7.8
13.2
3
6.4
2.0
3.7
5.0
4
4.2
1.7
2.2
4.6
5
2.8
1.5
1.8
3.4
6
1.9
1.4
1.7
2.8
7
1.3
1.3
1.5
2.5
8
.9
1.2
1.2
2.3
9
.7
1.1
1.1
1.8
These predicted probabilities help to explain why many states do not think the reform has helped
to impose any semblance of a rule-of-law. The answer hinges on trust in the institution. Trust in
the institution will significantly impact the reforms ability to reduce violence. In areas where
100
Presidencia de la Republica, Homicidios.
58
there is no trust, the reform will not reduce violence.
With regard to control variables, the models also confirm the suspected relationships
between violence and income and violence and family structure. However, the informal
economy control variable does not conform to what was expected. The percent of the
population who works in the informal economy has a negative impact on violence. This is a
surprising result that runs in the opposing direction of the hypothesis. The model predicts that a
municipality that has 100 percent of its population working in the informal economy will reduce
each count of homicide by a factor of 6 compared to a municipality that has 0 percent of its
population working in the informal economy. There are no municipalities that have either 0
percent or 100 percent of the population in the informal economy so this is an out of range
estimate. However, the directionality of the coefficient still opposes extant theory. A possible
explanation for this finding is along the lines of bridging social capital: communities without
formal institutional structures supplement these with informal institutional structures as a means
to keep control.101 In other words, a community that has its entire workforce in the informal
sector has not fallen into anarchy; rather, it has replaced formal institutional arrangements for
informal institutional arrangements. Conventional theories predict that this is a recipe for more
violence; however, it could also be the case that informal institutional arrangements have the
potential to impose a rule-of-law. There are a number of examples of this sort of arrangement in
Mexico. For example, in Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero a group of rural villagers decided to
start community groups in 2012 with the sole purpose of imposing security.102 The small
community was tired of violence, “fed up with the police” and “exasperated with their
101
Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy.
102
Laurent Thomet, “Vigilante Justice Is at Work in Mexico,” Iol News, January 28, 2013,
www.iol.co.za/news/world/vigilante-justice-is-at-work-in-mexico-1.1459854#.USD3RWeQPNh.
59
ineffective judicial system.” They took up arms and started self-policing, arresting over 40
members of local gangs and narcotic-related groups. Similar groups have appeared in Chihuahua
and Michoacán throughout the previous decade. These informal communities are marginalized
from the State. Percent of population in the informal economy is a proxy measure for this
phenomenon.
The percent of households that are headed by a single female has a positive impact on
violence. The count of homicides is predicted to increase by a factor of 271 when in
municipality with 100 percent of its households headed by single mothers compared to
municipalities with 0 percent of its households headed by single mothers. This confirms what
“broken-homes” theorists would expect to find.
Income is statistically significant (p= < .01) but substantially insignificant. It predicts no
change for an increase in income (this is true of a one peso increase in average income as well as
higher multiples, such as a 100,000 peso increase in income).
The always-zero part of the ZINB model is a logistic regression which tests whether
those specific variables cause a municipality to go from non-violent (zero deaths) to one death. I
do not expect that the rule-of-law institutions and the theories I explore about their ability to
reduce violence apply here. Instead, I include some basic determinants to homicide: percent of
female-led households, percent of population in the informal economy, and average taxable
income. All of these variables are statistically significant and operate in the suspected manner,
except for the percent of the population that works in the informal economy. An increase in
female-led households increases the likelihood of a municipality becoming violent (death=1).
When a municipality goes from zero female-led households to all female-led households, the
probability that it becomes violent increases by a factor of 5. A municipality that increases
60
average income by 100,000 pesos (slightly under 8,000 US dollars) is less likely to become
violent by a factor of 2. A municipality that goes from no informal economy work to all
informal economy work is 5 percent less likely to become violent. All of these operate as
suspected, except for informal economy work, which once again is an anomalous finding.
Model 6 is similar to Model 5 except it looks specifically at the impact of the police
reforms and trust on violence instead of judicial reforms. The estimates paint the same story as
the estimates in the judiciary-based model. Table 5 describes the results of Model 6, using
incident rate ratios.
Table 5: ZINB Model showing the Impact of Police on the Count of Drug-Related
Homicides in Mexico, 2007 -2009
IRR
Std Error P Value
Trust in the police X Reform
.71
.07
< .01
Police Reform (1 = yes, 0 = otherwise)
3.01
.82
< .01
Trust of Police
.81
.06
< .01
Pct of Female-led Households
359.99
245.30
< .01
Pct in Informal Economy
.92
.01
< .01
Income
1.00
.01
< .01
2008 dummy
1.71
.13
< .01
2009 dummy
2.23
.28
< .01
Pct of Female-led Households
5.39
2.15
< .01
Pct in Informal Economy
-.05
.02
< .01
Income
-.01
.01
< .01
Number of police officers
-.07
.17
<. 01
Always Zero Predictors
61
N = 3,440
Non Zero Observations = 1,799
Zero Observations = 1,641
Similar to the judiciary model, I use three variables to measure the interactive impact of police
reform and trust on homicide: ß1(Trust in the police X Police Reform), ß2(Police Reform), and
ß3(Trust in the police). Again, because this is an interaction effect, these coefficients have
slightly different interpretations than non-interactive coefficients.
The interaction effect shows us that this difference in counts of homicides in reforms
versus unreformed municipalities diminishes when trust increases. Unlike judicial reforms,
places with police reforms will always produce lower levels of violence than places without
them—regardless of the level of trust. At low levels of trust, police reforms will produce lower
instances of violence than not reformed. When municipalities have average or high levels of
police trust in the institution, the police reform will reduce violence to an even greater extent
than non-reformed municipalities.
These two models, estimating the impact of judicial and police reforms on violence at
various levels of trust in the institution show that trust in the institution is a key factor to
incorporate in any reform effort. In the case studies to follow, I delve into the matter of trust and
explain that trust matters because it is responsible for spurring public participation in the formal
institutional rule-of-law. Without it, a rejection of these formal institutions will give rise to
apathy or even informal, vigilante forms of justice. In the following section, I explore these
processes in the context of three states: Mexico State, Oaxaca, and Baja California. I show that
the implementation process of the reforms is precarious and prone to numerous faults. I show
that overcoming the trust in the institution barrier is a key factor to reduce violence via rule-oflaw reforms. I show that Oaxaca and Mexico State took serious missteps in the implementation
62
process as a result the persisting mistrust and inability to increase the participation in the rule-oflaw institutions. Baja California offers a different story. It successfully navigated the pitfalls of
institutional reform and expanded citizen participation, not only decreasing known impunity, but
increasing citizen participation. In all three cases, I explore a historical institutional perspective
of how trust in institution has been shaped in the state.
63
Chapter 4: The Cases of Mexico State, Oaxaca, and Baja California
"If the people saw an application of justice to those who assault them,
to those who ostensibly break the law,
of course they would not have this strong motivation to also impose the law.”
- Journalist in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca 103
In this chapter, I examine three states in Mexico and their experiences with
democratization, trust in institutions, and the current reform efforts. In Oaxaca and Mexico
State, the judicial reform effort was met with lynchings and public protests while in Baja
California the judiciary continues to make front page news as a star institution. I show that trust
in the institution is one of the main components missing from the reform effort in Oaxaca and
Mexico State.
In the course of these case studies, I show that participation, or non-participation, in the
formal rule-of-law institutions exists along a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, people
believe that the institutions are beneficial to society and themselves and routinely utilize their
services (e.g., file complaints, report crimes, etc) and cooperate with their processes (e.g., testify
in court if summoned; speak with police investigators if asked). In the middle of the spectrum
there is apathy. This is when people do not think the institutions are worth their time and/or
energy so they are passive toward them: they do not report crime to police or act as a witness in a
courtroom. At the other end of the spectrum, people have a complete distrust of the institutions’
ability to perform its basic tasks and therefore are often hostile toward them: protesting their
operations and finding informal alternatives to them, such as vigilante justice.
103
Cuauhtemoc Blas, “Salina Cruz, Linchamiento y Corrupción,” En Marcha: Realidad
Municipal de Oaxaca, February 22, 2010,
http://www.revistaenmarcha.com.mx/columnas/cronicas-de-la-insula/371-salina-cruzlinchamiento-y-corrupcion.html.
64
Figure 10: Spectrum of Participation in the Rule-of-Law
Oaxaca and Mexico State are two good examples of states where a deep discontent with
the rule-of-law institutions can be found as well as a consequent pattern of lynching and vigilante
justice. They exist on the right side of the spectrum where participation is high, but not within
formal institutions. To be sure, lynchings are a global phenomenon. Lynchings are an
alternative form of justice, sought out when the formal institutions are not seen as a viable option
due to their lack of trust.104
There are many misconceived notions regarding lynchings in Mexico. Carlos Vilas
(2001) comprehensively analyzed the phenomenon in the last decade of the 20th century and
dispelled many of the fallacies.105 Lynchings are often cast as a predatory form of violence: a
group of poor farmers killing a wealthy land baron or a group of young street thugs killing a
local police officer. Vilas, in contrast, found that of the 110 lynchings throughout Mexico from
104
Carlos Vilas, “(In)justicia Por Mano Propia: Linchamientos En El Mexico Contemporaneo,”
Revista Mexicana de Sociologia 63, no. 1 (2001): 26.
105
Vilas, “(In)justicia Por Mano Propia: Linchamientos En El Mexico Contemporaneo.”
65
1987 to 1998, the majority (80 percent) were performed by the local citizens in a community
who did not personally know the person being lynched other than for his/her suspected crimes.
He also found that the lynchings are mainly conducted by poor people against poor people.106
Lastly, lynchings are also often portrayed as occurring in anarchic-type scenarios where there is
no semblance of any rule-of-law institution. In Mexico, it seems to be the case that institutions
do exist, but it is the people’s preference not to use them. In Vilas’ study, he found that the
police are responsible for interrupting almost half of all lynchings. 107
The lack of trust in the rule-of-law institutions to handle the perceived insecurity is based
in true histories of inefficiencies and corruption. 108 In the cases of Oaxaca, Mexico State and
Baja California, like most of Mexico, the citizens have real reasons not to trust the judiciary.
Much of Mexico has a grievance with the formal rule-of-law institutions in their community.
This soiled connection between institution and citizen is what the reforms should address if it
seeks to reduce violence and create a rule-of-law.
States in Mexico all have slightly different experiences with trust in the institution, public
participation and vigilantism. I proceed with an analysis of three cases. For each case, I explore
factors that have affected the trust of the judiciary, historically and presently. In the exploration
of the three case studies, I illustrate that in areas where trust in the institution is lower, the
reforms were not able to convince society that the institution is sufficiently different from the
previous mode of operation and as a consequence, the reforms, and institution, were rejected.
As shown in Figure 10 below, the three states clearly differ in terms of trust in the
106
Ibid., 20.
107
Ibid. 42% are interrupted before the person is killed, and 77% of these are stopped by the
police.
108
Ibid.
66
judiciary. Baja California ranks the highest, then Oaxaca, and then Mexico State below them.
The Y axis is the number of respondents and the X axis is the number they indicated to rank their
confidence in the judiciary.
Figure 11: Trust in the judiciary in Baja California, Oaxaca, and Mexico State
As seen above, Baja California has high levels of trust in the institution compared with
other states. Clearly and Stokes (2009) further illustrate that Baja Californians are also more
likely to scrutinize and be skeptical of the motives and actions of the institutions.109 Criticism
does not equal distrust. This criticism of the institutions is beneficial for the institution providing
it translates into increased citizen awareness and watchdog behavior as opposed to absenteeism
and vigilantism. In the case of Baja California, this criticism of the courts appears to be the
former while in Oaxaca and Mexico State, the latter.
While in these three states, I conducted an experimental survey of one hundred and
109
Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism, 91–94.
67
twenty students per state.110 The survey results from the three states support this theory. As
shown in Figure 10 above, the mean for trust in the judiciary was much higher in Baja California
(6.7) than Oaxaca (5.4) and Mexico State (4.6). Yet, the percent of people who thought that the
court gave their specific grievance enough attention was on par with the other two states (see
Table 6 below).
The key difference between trust and criticism is how it affects public participation. As I
illustrate in the cases to follow, Baja Californians remain critical of the judiciary and the reform
but they remain an active part of the rule-of-law by interacting with the formal institutions. In
Oaxaca and Mexico State however, the criticism is not offset by trust in the institution, and thus
participation in the formal institutions is often negligible.
The survey shows that public participation in the courts remains incredibly high in Baja
California compared to Oaxaca and Mexico State. Nearly 60 percent of the sample had
interacted with the courts in some fashion in the past few years. This is double the rate of
Oaxaca (30 percent) and almost double the rate of Mexico State (38 percent). As the case studies
suggest, criticism in Baja California does not hinder public participation because trust remains
intact, unlike the cases of Oaxaca and Mexico State.
110
The survey was conducted with Alberto Isai Baltazar Cruz, Judith Albarrán Carbajal, and
Antonio Valladolid from August 2012 until March 2013 in Tijuana, Baja California; Oaxaca,
Oaxaca; and Toluca, Mexico State. 120 students were surveyed in each location, chosen at
random on a University Campus. The refusal rate was negligible, less than 2% of all those asked
to take part. The group of students represent each of the major areas of the states in which they
were surveyed. Less than 4% came from outside of the state in which they were surveyed. The
text of the surveys are found in Appendix 5. The questions were selected based on responses
found in9 different focus groups, 3 per location. These focus groups consisted of 5 people each,
with ages varying from 18 to 58.
68
Table 6: Public perceptions of the courts in Baja California, Oaxaca, and Mexico State
Baja
Oaxaca
California
Mexico
State
TRUST
Confidence/Trust in courts
6.7*
5.4
4.6
32 %
32 %
24 %
60%*
30%
38%
77 %
71 %
74 %
CRITICISM
The matter received attention in courts
PARTICIPATION
Total percent with any court experience
Control
Know about the judicial reforms?
* Statistically different than other two states
I start with a discussion of Mexico State. In the case of Mexico State, I show the PRI
authoritarianism ensured that the attempt at institutional reform was greeted with incredible
suspicion. Instead of viewing the reform as a potential initiative for increased security,
politicians and the public alike viewed the reform through the historical lens of PRI manipulation
and treated it as a power play by then PRI-governor, Enrique Peña Nieto (now President Peña
Nieto). This political wrangling resulted in a complete lack of funding essentially killing the
reform before it was implemented.
In the case of Mexico State, the judiciary was viewed as a
trading card for political capital and not as a legitimate political institution. Society was quick to
notice that the non-funded reform did not produce a better institution, and the result was
persisting mistrust and informal methods of justice.
In the case of Oaxaca, I illustrate that, despite a large influx of resources to implement the
69
judicial reforms, the overwhelming distrust of the judiciary ensured that the reform process was
doomed to fail. The reform initiative suffered from police incompetency and society blamed the
failures of justice on the distrusted judiciary rather than the well-liked police (Oaxaca is
anomalous in that it has a respected police force- an issue I discuss later). The result of the
botched reform effort was continued vigilante movements of justice and a call to reverse the
reforms.
In the case of Baja California, I show that, like Oaxaca, the reform process benefited
from an immense amount of resources. However, Baja California’s institutional development
ensured that trust in the institution translated the citizen discontent with the reform into useful
watchdog behavior as opposed to destructive distrust. As a result, the reform has become
accepted in society and people more willingly engage in the rule-of-law.
Mexico State
Mexico State has the unfortunate designation as containing some of Mexico’s most
notoriously powerful, and corrupt, politicians. There are even rumors of a secret group of
powerful men in Mexico State, El Yunque (the anchor), who truly decide elections. While other
states have witnessed changes in power in the governorship (some occurring decades ago),
Mexico State’s governorship has not experienced any alteration. Many of the former governors
have also headed the PRI national party, further giving the state access to pockets of power. The
state ranks as the most corrupt state (excluding the federal district) by Transparency
International.111 The state government functionaries have persistently and variously been
111
Transparencia Mexicana, Indice Nacional de Corrupcion y Buen Gobierno (Transparencia
Mexicana, 2007).
70
accused of corruption, nepotism, incompetence, and scandal. In an interview with Arturo
Chavarria Sanchez, president of the College of Architects and Urban Planners of the State of
Mexico, he describes the state of affairs in Mexico State:
“[Enrique Pena Nieto the previous governor] is a genuine product of nepotism; he grew
up in that school. His uncle Arturo Montiel gave him a high position in his administration
so he could later inherit the governorship. [Once in power] Pena Nieto gave his cousin
Alfredo de Mazo Maza the Tourism Secretariat. He appointed his aunt Marcela Velasco
Gonzalez Secretary of Urban Development. His cousin Carolina Monroy del Mazo he put
in charge of Mexico State Radio and Television, and then appointed her Secretary of
Economic Development. He appointed his cousin Gustavo Cardenas Monroy Secretary of
Environment. He made his uncle, former governor Alfredo del Mazo Gonzalez, president
of the State of Mexico Council of Infrastructure. He gave his cousin Ernesto Monroy
Yurrieta the post of Deputy Secretary of Education. He appointed his uncle Arturo Lugo
Pena Deputy Secretary of Public Highways of the Communications Secretariat.”112
Municipal governance in Mexico State similarly lacks in representative and participatory
institutions. In a thorough case study of one of Mexico State’s municipalities, Cuidad
Nezahualcóyotl, Andrew Selee discusses how the democratization process in Mexico State is
anomalous: although opposition parties have emerged, society still lacks any meaningful way to
contribute to the development of the state. This is largely because the opposition parties
followed the PRI’s historical clientelistic approach to governance. The PRD has been able to
win many of the local offices in Cuidad Nezahualcóyotl, however, they “have reinvented or
fallen back on old strategies of clientelistic control reminiscent of previous PRI governments.” 113
The fall of single party authoritarianism in Mexico State at the local-level did not
translate into a democratic society. The rise of the opposition parties meant that citizens had a
choice between political parties but still “few formal institutional channels for influencing public
112
Rodrigo Vera Proceso, “Corruption: Edomex, the Example Everyone Follows,” Borderland
Beat, November 9, 2012, http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2012/11/corruption-edomex-exampleeveryone.html.
113
Andrew Selee, Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico (University
Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011). Pg 132.
71
decisions and almost no autonomous space outside of parties.”114 The authoritarian tendencies
are “compounded by the lack of public spaces, including parks, city newspapers, community
radio stations, or local television programs, that could have facilitated deliberation among
citizens.”115 Thus, while political party completion grows throughout the state, pragmatic policy
decisions are often difficult to obtain in a system built of various clientelistic networks between
people and government, and deep suspicion between political parties.
In the 1970s and 1908s Mexico State experienced a number of social movements that had
the possibility of creating a new space for public participation in society:




SEPAC (Servicios Populares, A.C.) – a group started by Jesuit priests devoted to
training community leaders
UNICON (Unión de Colonias de Nezahualcóyotl) – a group created by SEPAC to
engage in land redistribution
UGOCM (Unión General de Obreros y Campesinos del Estado de México) – a
group created by disenfranchsied PRI members to argue for better working
conditions
FIPI (Frente Popular Independiente) – a group created by students to influence the
political thought towards a Maoist perspective.116
These social movements did not succeed in creating a pluralistic and participatory landscape.
According to Andrew Selee, “their possibilities for action were severely reduced by the almost
complete domination of the PRI and the unwillingness of this party to deal with any organization
that did not show it a degree of loyalty.”117
The rise of two non-responsive parties in Mexico State and continued absence of societal
114
Ibid. Pg 160.
115
Ibid. Pg 138.
116
Ibid. Pg 140 - 141
117
Ibid. Pg 141
72
participation
Political competition in some Mexican States translated into increased representation and
participation and pluralism in society. In Mexico State the PRD (who have only won at the
municipal level), mimicked the PRI’s strategy for control: the reliance on loyalty and clientelism
to govern and the use of authoritarianistic pivots to consolidate control. The judicial reform in
Mexico State was used as a tool in this power struggle. While the PRI tried to use the reform, in
part, to consolidate the PRI’s power over the judiciary, the PRD (along with PAN members)
opposed the proposal to implement adversarial reforms in the state on the basis that it was
nothing more than a power play by the PRI Governor, Enrique Peña Nieto. Under the reform,
the governor would gain the ability to appoint the state Supreme Court judges and three of seven
members of the Judicial Council with the State Congress.118
The PRI pushed the legislation through the state congress with 60 votes from the PRI
members and from members of allied parties such as New Alliance Party, Green Party of
Mexico, Labor Party, Convergence and the Social Democratic Party.
Luis Sánchez Jiménez, PRD leader in the state, said the reform, "is a clear setback for
democracy" as it would alter the balance of powers in the state in favor of the ruling PRI. 119 He
continued, noting that the backers of the reform, "have succumb to authoritarianism and they
decided to use their strength in Congress to back the little dictator Peña Nieto." Other PAN
Representatives such as Monica Fragoso, called on society to sue the governor to prevent the
118
Israel Dávila and Javier Salinas, “Se Oponen PAN y PRD En Edomex a Reforma Judicial,”
La Jornada, December 21, 2009, www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/12/21/estados/028n3est.
119
Ibid.
73
reform.120 This elite battle over the reform in congress reinforced many people's initial
opposition to the changes. The discourse of the judicial reform became a political battle of
power instead of a discussion of justice and security. To push back against the “little dictator,”
the local opposition parties, united together refused to allocate sufficient resources to implement
the reform.
La Jornada conducted a survey of 20 justices in Mexico State and found that “12 rallied
strongly against oral trials, five said they would be impossible in the short term and only three
felt that the reform would lead to streamlined processes and a better justice system.”121 During
the implementation stages, supporters of the reform argued that many more resources were
needed to sufficiently train lawyers and judges in the adversarial process. Jose Castillo, president
of the National Commission on Courts and Justice, warned that budgets would need to double in
order to implement the reform, stating "we respectfully ask that the state executive and
legislative powers provide the judiciary adequate and timely budgetary support to meet the
requirements of the judicial reform. [This budgetary support] will give society a modern justice
system modern with decent facilities and trained staff to meet the challenges that the reform
itself implies." 122
Opponents expressed concern about the reform noting that professional training in
general was needed more than new training in a specialized system. 123 According to one judge,
120
Ibid.
121
Alfredo Méndez and Jesús Aranda, “Magistrados Rechazan Juicios Orales; Preferible
Capacitar Personal, Señalan.”
122
Israel Dávila, “Entidades Exigen Más Recursos Para Sustentar La Reforma Penal,” La
Jornada, accessed November 1, 2012,
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/05/08/index.php?section=estados&article=036n1est.
123
Alfredo Méndez and Jesús Aranda, “Magistrados Rechazan Juicios Orales; Preferible
Capacitar Personal, Señalan.”
74
"The Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) does not currently have any money to put toilets or chairs
in the criminal courts as a service to litigants, and now they want special courtrooms for oral
trials." 124
Figure 12: Indicator of Trained Judicial Workers in Proportion to All Judicial Workers,
Mexico State 125
As the Figure 11 shows, the number of trained professionals as a percentage of the total
has dropped since the reform legislation was enacted, from 39 percent in 2007 to 16 percent in
2011. This drop in percentage is due to increasing the number of people in the workforce at a
faster rate than the number of people being trained.
Lack of resources for implementation is a reoccurring theme in Mexico State. Prior to
the use of the adversarial system, the federal government had agreed to give the state government
over 300 million pesos (about 25 million US dollars) to conduct the implementation of the
124
Ibid.
125
Baruch Delgado Carbajal, “Segundo Informe de Labores 2011” (Tribunal Superior de Justicia
del Estado de Mexico, n.d.), 144.
75
judicial reform.126 This sort of support is necessary because courts are taking on a portion of the
federal case load with the reform.127 Under the FASP funding, Mexico State received an
allocation of $687,581,800 pesos (about 55 million US dollars). As of the start of 2011, it had
utilized 68 percent of these funds.128 This is the largest sum of money given to any state under
the FASP program. However, Mexico State is also the most populous state in Mexico,
comprised of over 15 million people. When evaluated on a per person basis, Mexico State
received among the lowest per person FASP funding in the country at less than four US dollars
per person. Oaxaca was granted nearly double this, with six US dollars per person. Baja
California was granted among the highest, at about 109 US dollars per person.129
This unsuccessful battle to gain resources for training resulted in a spectacular number of
missteps when the new system was unveiled in Mexico State. The lack of resources, as is the
case historically, led to a lack of professionalization and capability. In short, the institution
remained corrupt, inefficient, and distrusted.
The most widely publicized case following the reform is the case of Paulette. In 2010,
the citizens of Mexico State were startled by the handling of the death of a handicapped four year
old girl named Paulette Gebara. Her parents, Mauricio Gebara, a successful businessman, and
Lisette Farah, a successful lawyer, reported her missing on March 22nd, 2010. The authorities
searched the house "from top to bottom.”130 It was not until March 31st, nine days later, that the
126
Dávila, “Entidades Exigen Más Recursos Para Sustentar La Reforma Penal.”
127
Ibid.
128
Sistema de Seguimiento y Evaluación, “Diagnostico de Las Corporaciones Policiales
Estatales.”
129
In Oaxaca there are roughly 3.8 million people and the state was granted $272,977,679 pesos
in FASP funds. In Baja California, there are roughly 3.2 million people and they were granted
$351,706,126 pesos in FASP funds.
130
“Fallas y Negligencia Muestran La Debilidad de La Justicia Mexicana,” CNN Mexico, July
76
Mexico State prosecutors returned to the house and said they had found the girl in her own bed,
dead of asphyxiation. They ruled the death an accident. Both parents cast doubts on the other
parent's story and a custody battle over their other, remaining daughter ensued.131 No-one was
ever charged in her death. The outcry over the lack of justice for the little girl ultimately led to
the replacement of Attorney General Bazbaz. According to the Associated Press, "Alberto
Bazbaz ... said he stood by his agency’s conclusion that Paulette’s death was an accident. But he
said he was stepping down because his agency had lost credibility and the trust of the public."132
Maria Elena Morera, who works with Causa de Común agrees and says that the justice system,
"continues being an enormously corrupt system which implies that the system has not been able
to implement [the reforms] as it ought to.133
This sentiment is seen in the very highest levels of government. In the Second Policy
Forum on Justice and Security, the former national Secretary of the Interior, Fernando Gómez
Mont, explained that the case of Paulette is precisely the reason why the justice system does not
have credibility. According to the coverage of the conference, he concluded that the "Mexican
system of justice needs to move toward a professionalization of a system of security that gives
certainty to the population that it will punish those guilty and effectively fight crime.”134
The lack of planning prior to implementation in Mexico State ensured that the reforms could not
14, 2010, http://mexico.cnn.com/nacional/2010/07/14/fallas-y-negligencia-muestran-debilidadde-justicia-mexicana.
131
Ken Ellingwood, “Mexican Girl Died by Accident in Bed, Prosecutors Say,” L.A. Times, May
22, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/22/world/la-fg-mexico-paulette-20100522.
132
Associated Press, “Mexico Prosecutor Quits in Outcry over Dead Girl,” Woodrow Wilson
Center for Scholars, May 26, 2010, http://mexicoinstitute.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/mexicoprosecutor-quits-in-outcry-over-dead-girl/.
133
“Fallas y Negligencia Muestran La Debilidad de La Justicia Mexicana.”
134
“En El Manejo de Caso Paulette, Más Dudas Que Certezas: Segob,” El Chiltepin, May 24,
2010, http://www.elchiltepin.com.mx/nota.php?idnota=4642.
77
convince the public that the system had changed. One woman who works with the reforms
describes them as “ridiculous.” She explained that, “many people do not know that this effort to
reform happened. It’s better for them; it’s very frustrating for those of us who watched them
fail.”135
According to her and others, the main fault is that the justice system did not receive
resources for training. 136 The Attorney General is currently—six years after the
implementation—planning to create an Institute for Training for the state. 137 One judge, speaking
autonomously, noted that the training needed to predate the use of the adversarial system, by "a
considerable period, perhaps five years" to give the government enough time to invest in "the
training of prosecutors, lawyers and judges, and to equip itself with the necessary infrastructure
to be viable long-term oral trials."138
As of October 2012, there still exists a large deficit in training in Mexico State. Only
1,183 participants—state-wide—have received credit for attending a course with the new
Training Institute.139 One specialist in the field, Aída Mireles, expressed grave concern about the
situation, stating, “The Public Ministry is not prepared, there are few people who have been
concerned with preparation. That creates problems in the processes. The lack of preparation
among the defense attorneys has spurred the judges to ask that they leave the hearing and
abandon the case because the accused does not have a true defense. This occurs at least once per
135
Anonymous Legal Professional, Interview #11. Toluca, Mexico State, December 13, 2012.
Anonymous, “Salina Cruz Interview #3.”
136
“Rezago En Preparación de Jucios Orales Genera Problemas,” El Universal, October 27,
2012, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/879301.html.
137
Ibid.
138
Alfredo Méndez and Jesús Aranda, “Magistrados Rechazan Juicios Orales; Preferible
Capacitar Personal, Señalan.”
139
Delgado Carbajal, “Segundo Informe de Labores 2011,” 122.
78
day throughout the different regions”… She explains that the prosecutors are also at fault noting
that they often try to get compensation agreements in the investigation stage arguing that they do
want to go to oral trial. She adds, “it is a total lack of knowledge of the process.”140
The police and judicial reforms in Mexico State did not offer evidence of new protocols
or systems of behavior. Many now call for the oral trials to be eliminated completely. The effort
to implement the reforms continues however, and advances are being made. But in Mexico
State, the initial showcase of the “new” system was marred by a lack of preparation and
institutional mistrust.
Without this confidence that the justice system will apprehend and convict those who
commit crimes, vigilante justice has emerged as an acceptable alternative. In a not-uncommon
bout of vigilante justice, a mob beat and burned three young men to death in February of 2012
for being suspected kidnappers. A young man returned to his neighborhood after a suspected
altercation with three suspected kidnappers and explained to his neighbors that he was in danger.
More than 40 people chased the three men down and burned them alive. Not one thought to call
the police and handle the situation in a court of law.141
If the society had trust in the judicial system, then crime reporting, and participation in
general, would have stymied these acts of vigilantism. Even after the reform, people continue to
treat the rule-of-law institutions as they did in previous days—with an emotion somewhere in
between apathy and distain. The US State Department once summarized the public support for
with crime reporting in Mexico as follows: “Reporting crime [in Mexico] is an archaic,
exhausting process in Mexico and is widely believed to be a waste of time except for the most
140
“Rezago En Preparación de Jucios Orales Genera Problemas.”
141
Justie in Mexico, “Lynching in Mexico Highlights Mistrust of Institutions, Advancement of
Oral Trials,” Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, February 19, 2012.
79
serious of crimes, or where a police report is required for insurance purposes.”142 This continues
to be the sentiment in Mexico State.
In a perhaps overly ironic situation during my field research in Mexico State, I happened
to be thrust into an unexpected role conducting research via participant observation when the bus
I was riding was attacked by a group of young armed men. Over the next ten hours, I was able to
witness first-hand the public’s reluctance to trust the formal rule-of-law institutions and the
formal rule-of-law institutions perpetual ability to disappoint. I explain below.
In late August of 2012, at about 11:00pm, on a bus in Mexico State three or four
passengers rose out of their seats, armed with guns, and proceeded to rob all of the passengers on
the bus. The bus driver, with a gun to his head, was instructed to continue driving. After all
passengers had been shaken down for money, jewelry, and other valuables, all stored bags were
torn apart in search of electronics. Upon completion, the group instructed the bus driver to stop;
they got out, and instructed him to continue driving for 30 minutes. When the driver stopped the
bus 30 minutes later, the culprits were long gone. The initial reaction of the passengers was to
take stock of what they had lost. People helped other people find items that had been thrown out
of their bags in the hasty search for electronics. Passengers attended to the young and
emotionally distraught with comforting words. One man had succeeded in hiding a cell phone
from the assailants. Yet no-one used it to call the police. It was passed around to different
passengers who used it to call loved ones.
The bus driver did not radio police either. Instead he radioed the parent bus company,
ADO, and they sent the company lawyer to the scene. When the lawyer arrived, he asked the
passengers what they would like to do. The first order of business on the majority of passengers
142
Bureau of Diplomatic Security, “Mexico 2011 OSAC Crime and Safety Report: Mexico City”
(Overseas Security Advisory Council, February 24, 2011).
80
list was to find a way to recoup their losses. This entailed obtaining a police report. At around
midnight, more than an hour after the robbery, the lawyer attempted to make the first
communication with the police.
The local police told the lawyer that they would not come to the scene. They claimed
that if the driver had continued for 30 minutes after the robbery then the matter was the
jurisdiction of the previous municipality of Chalco. We drove back to the previous town and
went to the police station. The bus turned around and returned to the municipality where the
robbers had departed the bus, Chalco. There was protest along the way. As one woman
exclaimed, “they want us to go to where the criminals are? the police should come here to us!”
Another seconded her protest, “Why did we have to drive back here to get our claims report?!?
We are the victims here.”
When we arrived at the police station, the police officers said that each person on the bus
(42 in total) had to provide a statement. Over the next four hours, one police officer took
passengers statements, one-by-one. By 4:00am, over half of the passengers had still not given a
statement. Seeing that this would continue well into the next day, the officer decided to allow
everyone to write a statement. He then collected the papers and printed a report of theft for
insurance purposes.143 It was around 6:00am, seven hours after the highway robbery.
At first, the passengers simply wanted to regain their lost items through insurance. But at
some point in the early morning, the consensus turned to wanting to actually see justice. People
began to question why the police did not also want justice. As we were leaving the station to get
back on the same highway where the robbery occurred, more protests were shouted, this time in
the direction of the police officers. One man rallied, “aren’t they going to do something about
143
Procuraduria General de Justicia del Estado de Mexco, “Carpeta de Investigacion
302050830373512,” August 23, 2012.
81
the robbers?” Another woman beaconed, “we don’t feel safe getting back on that road. Would
you escort us through the town?” The police remained where they were.
Convinced that the police were not going to search for the culprits, the passengers started
to brainstorm about ways they could obtain justice without the police. The most vocal of group,
a young female journalist traveling with her husband, said that the group should consider taking
the bus company to court. She explained, “ADO is to blame. They are supposed to guarantee our
security in their buses and they did not. Did anyone see them take a video of all the passengers
prior to boarding? [this is common procedure on buses in Mexico to prevent robberies] They
didn’t take one! How did the robbers get their guns through the metal detectors? ADO
employees must have let them through another door!” The crowd started to get excited by her
assertions. Murmurs of agreement passed through the disheveled group. One woman declared,
“I saw the girl [robber] pass through door number 12! [which was unmanned]”
Over time, the excitement slowly dissipated. Some people entertained her ideas and
offered opposing points. The journalist stated that many passengers lost things that were not
covered by insurance and a case against ADO was the only way to help them. In response, a
man grumbled that it would cost a lot of money to file a case against a company as big as ADO.
The journalist stated that she knew someone in a human rights organization that might take the
case pro bono. An older man retorted, “they [human rights groups] never succeed!” As the
young journalist attempted to rally people around filing a lawsuit against ADO, one-by-one
people became convinced that such an action was futile. The back and forth slowly ended and
the group resigned to the fact that justice would not be served by the police or by the courts.
Some people left the discussion and sat by themselves in a corner of the police station. Some
people went back into the bus to sleep. The rest went back to talking about how to get the
82
insurance claim filed correctly to recoup their losses.
I doubt that every robbery story is the same.144 However, in Mexico State, there does
appear to be some general trends laced throughout each person’s experience with crime and the
rule-of-law institutions. In general, people find it to be a waste of time to deal with both the
police and the courts. This sentiment continues uninhibited after the reform. In the minds of
many in Mexico State, the reform effort was never intended to address security, it was meant to
advance the PRI’s continued hegemony in the state. Therefore, the resulting missteps in the oral
trial system were hardly surprising to people. They simply reaffirmed the mistrust of the
institution.
Oaxaca
In Oaxaca, the reforms failed to take hold despite a concerted state-wide and international
effort to implement them. In Oaxaca, society framed their rejection to the reforms in terms of
political manipulation and institutional distrust. However, Oaxaca is unique compared to other
states in that the people framed their opposition to the reform in terms of a foreign imposed
system at odds with local indigenous culture.
The adversarial system is founded upon the notion that it if the court is to err, it is
normatively better to err and have a guilty person go free than err and have an innocent person
go to jail. Mexico scholars at the US-based Trans-border Institute noted that the autonomous
regions in Oaxaca governed by usos y costumbres may have a conflict with the new forms of
144
I wish I had more time in Mexico State to collect other people’s stories, but after this incident,
I decided to instead return to Oaxaca for additional field research.
83
justice (such as innocent until proven guilty) and it’s incompatibility with indigenous customs
and norms.145 Some examples of such rhetoric in the citizenry include:
“To Salinacrucenses, justice is a matter they don’t have to think of taking into their own
hands since that is where it has always rested; and oral trials, accompanied by that foreign
notion of the presumption of innocence, only allow the guilty to go free, unpunished” 146
“How many deaths, how many violations, how many offenses does the town have to
suffer so that the beneficiaries of this bad--modern?--idea, which are the oral trials, will
accept that they do not serve Oaxaca. They do not serve Oaxaca for many reasons,
because they established themselves without ever having seen the local culture, without
preparing judges and lawyers. To make matters worse, they are the same corrupt judges
of the public ministry that continue their shady business, only now in the oral trials.” 147
Cultural arguments are salient in Oaxaca. In comparison to other states in Mexico,
especially compared to its neighboring Chiapas, Oaxacans had become successful at arguing and
winning autonomous political institutions based on claims to ethnicity. The imposition of usos y
costumbres, or indigenous voting practices in Oaxaca in the mid-1990s was celebrated in ethnic
politics circles as a paragon of ethnic understanding. This claim to being a nirvana of
multicultural practices soon started to crumble. Scholars such as Eisenstadt, Danielson, and
Yelle have shown that the declaration of an autonomous indigenous political system (i.e., usos y
costumbres) had less to do with indigeneity, and more to do with political horse-trading by the
145
Matthew Ingram, “State-level Judicial Reform in Mexico: The Local Progress of Criminal
Justice Reforms,” Justice in Mexico; University of San Diego (May 2010),
http://catcher.sandiego.edu/items/peacestudies/Ingram-State%20Level%20Reform.pdf.
146
Nancy Blake and Kathleen Bohne, “The Judicial System in Mexico,” Open Democracy, July
8, 2009, http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-judicial-system-in-mexico-challenges-andprospects-for-reform-part-ii.
147
“Índice Flamígero Contra Juicios Orales,” En Marcha: Realidad Municipal de Oaxaca,
March 3, 2010, http://www.revistaenmarcha.com.mx/editorial/373-indice-flamigero-contrajuicios-orales.html.
84
crumbling PRI in the state (in an attempt to keep opposition parties out of municipal offices).148
The creation of political structures, meant to keep opposition parties out of government
and kept the branches of government consolidated under the PRI umbrella, ensured that
Oaxaca’s institutional development remains stunted.149 As described by democracy scholar
Correa-Caberera:
The Oaxacan government’s failure to solidify separation of powers inhibited local
democratic progress. Oaxacan governors’ control [historically] over the state legislature
gave them control over the state judiciary that did not challenge their use of funds,
assaults on municipal autonomy, or their use of unfair electoral practices. … Oaxacan
political institutions are still quite ineffective in general. Even now, authoritarianism,
arbitrariness, and corruption characterize Oaxaca’s government. The local justice system
is highly dysfunctional. Local legislative power shows severe limitations and does not
adequately represent Oaxaca’s citizens. Some local legislators are practically unknown
to a great part of the electorate and the local executive generally controls the legislature,
thus marginalizing citizen participation.150
Even if the motivation to grant UC privileges to municipalities was not based completely
on the special mix of indigenous practices found in that municipality historically, the act of
officially recognizing UC in places across Oaxaca succeeded in creating a discourse of
indigenous autonomy and multicultural existence. Although there is a discourse in Oaxaca that
the reforms are rejected because they are fundamentally opposed to their autonomous UC
culture, I argue that the rejection of the reforms is actually a reaction to the historical mistrust of
the institution, regardless of indigeneity.
In order to see whether the reforms are in fact incompatible with Oaxacan culture, I
148
Michael Danielson, Todd Eisenstadt, and Jennifer Yelle, “Ethnic Identity, Informal
Institutions, and the Failure to Elect Women in Indigenous Southern Mexico,” Journal of
Politics in Latin America (forthcoming 2013).
149
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Democracy in “Two Mexicos”: Political Institutions in Oaxaca
and Nuevo Leon (Palgrave Macmillon, 2013).
150
Ibid., 57–58.
85
surveyed people in Oaxaca’s capital, Oaxaca de Juarez. I first conducted several focus groups—
to determine survey questions—and then conducted 120 individual surveys of Oaxacan college
students attending Oaxaca's largest university, Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez de Oaxaca
(UABJO), in September 2012. I chose to draw the survey population from UABJO because it
contains a mixture of people from all over Oaxaca. The respondents come from all regions,
including UC and non-UC communities (see Appendix 3). The survey asked various questions
about their experience with the rule-of-law institutions (see Appendix 6).
I gave respondents a scenario where a man was brought to court for a suspected
homicide. I stated that the police could only provide circumstantial evidence and the suspect was
set free. I asked respondents whether they agreed with this verdict and 68 percent agreed—the
same percentage as those who stated that keeping an innocent person out of jail is more
important than a guilty person on the street. To further test for possible bias, for half of the
surveys, I included a sentence about how the city had just reformed its judiciary and the
defendant was given an oral trial and set free (whereas the other half of the surveys indicated
that the defendant was presumed to be set free under the old system of justice). When I
disaggregate the surveys based on this piece of information, there is a clear split. When told that
the suspected murderer went through an oral trial, fewer people agreed that he should have gone
free (58 percent). When told that the suspected murderer was set free under the old system 77
percent agreed with the verdict. This 19 percent drop in agreement with the verdict is based
solely on the mention of the type of trial. Nothing about the underpinning morality of
defendant’s rights changed. In both scenarios the police did not provide enough evidence to
show the guilt of the suspect. This near 20 percent change in whether they agree with the verdict
highlights the negative media surrounding oral trials and offers suspicion that the “incompatible
86
morality claim” is used as a tool in argument but not necessarily reflecting reality. In both cases,
the majority of people agreed that circumstantial evidence should not be enough to convict a
suspect.
In order to further test this, I directly inquired about how they conceptualize justice. I find
that, on average, the respondents support defendant protections and the presumption of
innocence—the moral underpinnings of the adversarial system—but they do not all trust the
adversarial system’s ability to adjudicate justice. This speaks to the mistrust of the judiciary
more than to an inherent opposition to the moral underpinnings of the adversarial system. The
critics of the reforms stated that the indigenous Oaxaca did not inherently believe in the notion of
“innocent until proven guilty.” To test whether the population believed that “innocent until
proven guilty” is a superior basis of justice to 'guilty until proven innocent', I asked them to
choose which one was a worse scenario: "That an innocent person goes to jail" or "That a guilty
person is set free."151 Two-third of the respondents, 68 percent, thought that it was worse for an
innocent person to go to jail. This illustrates majority support for the protection of the
defendants among the sample.
To check whether these responses were in line with other parts of Mexico, I asked survey
respondents from Baja California and Mexico State the same set of questions. As expected, they
responded similarly. Interestingly enough, respondents in Oaxaca were actually slightly more in
favor of the presumption of innocence than the other two states (statistically there is no
difference between the states).
151
All survey questions in their spanish and english form can be seen in Appendix 5.
87
Table 7: Moral Agreement with Judicial Reforms
Moral Agreement?
Oaxaca
Innocent until proven guilty
Baja
California
66 %
68 %
Mexico
State
60 %
Lack of evidence dismissal
71 %
68 %
82 %
This rejection of the reform in Oaxaca was, I argue, due to institutional failures and a persisting
mistrust, not a rejection of foreign imposed values.
Unlike Mexico State where political discontent was apparent prior to, and during the
reform process; by most accounts, the atmosphere leading up to the 2006 Oaxaca state-level
reform of its penal code was positive. Oaxacans from many professions praised the potential of
the reforms to provide a fairer process by which justice would be enacted: the accused would be
innocent until proven guilty, the public prosecutors would lose much of its notoriously corrupt
power; judges would be neutral arbitrators. In the summer prior to reform, Oaxaca held a mock
trial to highlight the procedures involved in the proposed reforms to lawyers, politicians and
other interested in the reforms. The trial showcased the new rights of the accused against
dubious testimonies.152
Many spoke of the benefits of the adversarial, oral-trial based justice system in the public
152
As described by one lawyer in attendance: "Attendees witnessed first-hand how the trial of
‘El Tigre’ would unfold. He allegedly shot his neighbour, a couple of weeks after threatening to
do so upon learning that his wife had been insulted by the deceased. The only eyewitness that
early morning was a gentleman who'd been drinking and smoking marijuana all night, as a result
of which his senses of observation had been dulled. But the forensic evidence pointed to the
accused, a former drug dealer now in rehab, as the only possible suspect, fingerprint on the pistol
and gunshot residue on his right hand. He admitted to being in a struggle to quell tempers, but no
more. The realism was striking, right down to The Tiger's answer on cross-examination as to
why he didn't phone police when he heard a ruckus on the street, rather than run outside: ‘I
couldn't. My phone service had been cut off because I hadn't paid the previous month's bill.’”
(Alvin Starkman, “Penal Reform in Oaxaca, MExico,” n.d., http://ezinearticles.com/?PenalReform-in-Oaxaca,-Mexico&id=235176.)
88
sphere prior to the Oaxacan congress passing the state-wide reform. According to one attendee
of the above-mentioned conference, Oaxacan Chief Prosecutor Patricia Villanueva’s rhetoric at
the conference was, "peppered with phrases such as due process, procedural fairness, judicial
restraint and impartiality, and advancement of the principles of democracy, human rights and
presumption of innocence.153 Similarly, Alejando Magno González Antonio, judge in the Fourth
Criminal Chamber of Supreme Court, said “that this new procedure brought significant changes,
such as resources to protect the rights of the accused …which no longer lend themselves to
judicial hierarchical control or to the political parties.”154
Following this momentum, the Oaxacan Congress enacted the reforms into law on
September 6, 2006 with Decree 308, titled "Código Procesal Penal Para El Estado de Oaxaca."
Containing 478 articles, the legislation permitted one of the biggest overhauls of the Oaxacan
system of justice in history. The region of El Istmo received the reform first in September of
2007. 155
Alfredo Lagunas Rivera was sworn in as the first President of the Supreme Court of
Oaxaca under the new system. The constitution was amended to give the Supreme Court
president a longer term, eligible for re-election after four years, in order to strengthen the
judiciary and "bolster public confidence in it."156 Lawyers received training in adversarial
processes such as witness questioning, and opening and closing arguments.
153
Ibid.
154
“Juicios Orales Garantizan Un Debido Proceso Legal,” January 31, 2012, http://ciudadaniaexpress.com/2012/01/31/juicios-orales-garantizan-un-debido-proceso-legal/.
155
“Implementation of ‘Juicios Orales’ in Oaxaca Will Move Forward This Year,” Justice in
Mexico News Report, February 14, 2012, http://justiceinmexico.org/2012/02/18/implementationof-jucios-orales-in-oaxaca-will-move-forward-this-year/.
156
Ibid.
89
The Oaxacan Supreme Court created the Strengthening Commission157 in order to provide
the training necessary to operate a new system with new protocols. The Strengthening
Commission funded and helped organize various seminars and courses in adversarial justice. For
example, the group, Oral Trial Coordination of the Supreme Court of Justice,158 started a course
titled "Strengthening the Adversarial System" in Oaxaca159; the Institute for Learning and
Specialization in the Judicial System160 recruited Dr. Monica Gonzalez Contro, from the Institute
of Legal Research of UNAM to teach a special course on adolescent rights161; and the Mexican
Bar Association and the American Bar Association’s Rule-of-law Initiative162 put together
trainings for lawyers specifically. The Judicial branch offered several other trainings, such as:
"Specialization Studies in the Adversarial Accusatorial System", Judicial Argument and Oral
Expression", "The Adversarial Accusatorial System"163. As described by a local Oaxacan
newspaper, Ciudadania Express, “All these training programs will undoubtedly have an
immediate impact on the substantial improvement of the administration of justice and allow the
staff a career in the judiciary, occupying ever higher responsibilities, according to his ability and
dedication to service”164. As described by Alexander Gonzalez, head of the Coordinating
Council for the Implementation of Adversarial System, "We will also generate jobs for
157
Comisión de Fortalecimiento
158
Coordinación de Juicio Oral del Tribunal Superior de Justicia
159
“Capacitación Para Fortalecer El Sistema de Juicios Orales: TSJE,” Ciudadania Express,
September 19, 2011, http://ciudadania-express.com/2011/09/19/capacitacion-para-fortalecer-elsistema-de-juicios-orales-tsje/.
160
Instituto de Capacitación y Especialización del Poder Judicial
161
“Poder Judicial Profesionaliza a Su Personal,” Ciudadania Express, February 8, 2012,
http://ciudadania-express.com/2012/02/08/poder-judicial-profesionaliza-a-su-personal/.
162
“Implementation of ‘Juicios Orales’ in Oaxaca Will Move Forward This Year.”
163
“D/154/2012” (Poder Judicial Oaxaca: Escuela Judicial, June 1, 2012).
164
“Poder Judicial Profesionaliza a Su Personal.”
90
dissemination and training designed not only for the operators but also for the general public.”165
According to INEGI SIMBAD, a number of indictors show a decrease in the impunity
rating in Oaxaca from 2006 to 2010 by over 10 percent.166 This is measured by looking at the
entire process of justice, the number of investigations started by the MP and the number of
sentences given by the courts. When looking only at homicide, in 2006, 83 percent of
investigations started by the attorney general's office were dismissed or did not result in a courtroom verdict. In 2010 this percentage had decreased to less than 71 percent.
The judicial reforms in Oaxaca were widely popular prior to implementation. Many
indicators illustrate that the reforms were successful in slightly increasing performance; yet
despite this, the public increasingly became discontent with the judicial reforms. In order to
flesh out the source of this discontent—despite evidence of institutional improvement—I turn to
the case of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca.
Salina Cruz was the site of the first oral trials in Oaxaca.167 It also experienced the first
and most prolific protests in Oaxaca against the judicial reforms.168 The case of Salina Cruz
illustrates how the distain for the judiciary persisted because the judiciary failed to convince the
public that the reforms brought about anything new or improved. The public did not notice the
165
“Instituciones Trabajaran Para Ejecucion de Juicios Orales,” Ciudadania Express, March 7,
2012, http://ciudadania-express.com/2012/03/07/instituciones-trabajaran-para-ejecucion-dejuicios-orales/.
166
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia (INEGI), Sistema Estatal y Municipal de Bases
de Datos.
167
There are eleven court houses in Oaxaca that have implemented oral trials. There are four
court houses in El Itsmo: one each in Salina Cruz, Matias Romero, Juchitán, and Tehuantepec.
Mixteca received the reforms next. Four court houses are in Mixteca: Nochixtlán, Huajuapan,
Tlaxiaco, and Putla. The Costa region is now implementing the reforms, with court houses in
Puerto Escondido/ Colotepec, Pinotepa Nacional, and Pochutla.
168
Victor Leonel Juan Martinez, “Linchamiento: La (in)justicia de Los Pobres,” En Marcha:
Realidad Municipal de Oaxaca, March 23, 2010,
http://www.revistaenmarcha.com.mx/analisis/407-linchamiento-la-injusticia-de-los-pobres.html.
91
concrete advancements to institutional performance; instead, the public felt a deep distrust that
the court would in fact convict defendants (who they assumed guilty). This was labeled a failure
of the courts, even though in most cases, the failure to convict could be squarely blamed on the
police.
Salina Cruz is the third largest municipality in Oaxaca. It lies in the region of El Itsmo,
on the Pacific Ocean. With a population of 75,000, Salina Cruz is a port city with few other
attractions. Here, the judiciary increased its rate of performance since the reform process began.
Figure 12 below shows that the percentage of crimes left unconcluded has decreased from 2008
up until 2011 in Salina Cruz.
Figure 13: Salina Cruz Court Performance169
250
223
200
163
150
119
91
100
Claims Started
Claims Finished
50
0
Jan 2008 - Dec 2009
Jan 2010 - Dec 2011
The court data show that performance, measured by number of cases resolved divided by
number of cases initiated, increased from 40 percent in 2008 and 2009 to 73 percent in 2010 and
2011.170 From 2006 to 2010, the number of MP agents increased from three to seven.171
These accomplishments reinforced and bolstered the positive atmosphere surrounding the
169
“Juicios Orales Oaxaca - Salina Cruz” (Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, October 1, 2012).
170
Ibid.
171
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia (INEGI), Sistema Estatal y Municipal de Bases
de Datos.
92
reforms. Indeed, Oaxaca had long considered itself a pioneer in criminal justice issues.172 The
first oral trial in Oaxaca was in September 2007 in Salina Cruz. It was a case where a man was
accused of verbally and physically assaulting his partner, Ana Guadalupe Martínez. One person
familiar with the trial explained that the police did not offer any evidence for the case because
they were “old friends” with the defendant.173 The man was found not guilty and set free. The
first protests against the oral trials began.174 According to one resident, “before the first trial,
people were excited about Oaxaca. But very soon we realized that [the government] deceived
us. These trials are just another means for them to get their way.”175
The adversarial system relies heavily on police procedure prior to the trial, including due
process during the arrest procedures and the subsequent investigation. These processes equip
lawyers with the ability to properly convince the court of a suspect's guilt. Critics warn that most
of Mexico's police are not currently able to conduct the appropriate procedures (e.g., gathering of
evidence) needed for adversarial trials. Under these situations, the presumption of “innocent until
proven guilty” permits too many criminals who are guilty to go free because the court simply
does not have the tools to prove guilt.
In 2010, the Oaxacan police force had reformed in many areas. Police wages had
increased to 6,225 pesos per month, equivalent to about 500 US dollars per month, and are
average compared to other states in Mexico.176 Local police in Tijuana, Baja California earn
172
Raul Ortiz-Urquidi, Oaxaca, Cuna de La Codificacion Iberoamericana (Oaxaca, Oaxaca:
Porrua, 1974).
173
Anonymous Human Rights NGO Worker, Interview #2. Salina Cruz, Oaxaca., October 15,
2012.
174
Jessica Cecilia Martínez, “El Juicio Oral No Encubre Delitos Contra Mujeres: Mafud Mafud,”
Cimac Noticias, June 18, 2009, http://www.cimacnoticias.com.mx/node/44795.
175
Anonymous Human Rights NGO Worker, Interview #2. Salina Cruz, Oaxaca.
176
Secretaria de Administracion, Oaxaca, “Tabulador de Sueldos y Puestos,” August 15, 2012.
93
around 1,100 US dollars per month—double their counterparts in Oaxaca, but some local police
in Yucatán earn just over 300 US dollars per month.177 In 2010, Oaxaca had used about 75
percent of its FASP funding for equipment. It had given its police force $65,303,627 pesos
(about 5 million dollars) for personal equipment and $13,258,311 pesos (about 1 million dollars)
for institutional equipment. Additionally, from 2007 to 2010, Oaxaca built 58 new buildings for
the police force. Oaxaca also ranks above average in its progress toward implementing
informational systems for the police, having completed 66 percent in 2010.178
Yet in terms of professionalization, Oaxaca ranks among the last in Mexico and has not
made progress recently. Oaxaca had a 12,305 strong police force; however, fewer than 400 of
these employees have gone through the professionalization components of the FASP program. 179
The 2009 General Law of the National System of Public Security mandates that police officers
pass an accreditation process conducted by the Centers of Control and Confidence Evaluation.
Along with Durango and San Luis Potosi, Oaxaca has barely started this process and has not
made improvement in doing so as of 2010.180
Interestingly enough, in Oaxaca, the police missteps in the provision of justice are not at
the public forefront of criticism. The errors in justice are largely blamed on the judiciary, and
specifically, the reforms in the judiciary. The reason Oaxacans have misplaced trust in the local
police force (the highest confidence in all of Mexico!) is because of its anomalous structure of
177
“SNSP Suggests Raising Police Salaries May Decrease Corruption,” Justice in Mexico News
Report, October 2, 2011, http://justiceinmexico.org/2011/10/02/snsp-suggests-raising-policesalaries-may-decrease-corruption.
178
Sistema de Seguimiento y Evaluación, “Diagnostico de Las Corporaciones Policiales
Estatales.”
179
Ibid.
180
“Seguridad y Justicia Penal En Los Estados: 25 Indicadores de Nuestra Debilidad
Institucional.”
94
community policing. In many—but not all—of Oaxaca’s municipalities, the police force is
made-up of local volunteers. People from the community serve on the force at various times in
their life. Therefore, to distrust the police is the same as distrusting your neighbor. This often
means that the blame for a lack of rule-of-law is placed on the judiciary instead of the police
(whose persistent failing undermine the judicial process). In a survey conducted in Oaxaca in
2012, I asked 120 college students about their experiences and perceptions regarding the police
and courts. I found that these respondent’s perceptions highlight this disconnect between
institutional functioning and trust. The majority of respondents had some interaction with the
police in the past year (e.g., calling to report an accident, a crime, or other problem) and only 16
percent said the matter received sufficient police attention while a mere 18 percent said that
police responded efficiently to the problem. Yet this same population expressed an aboveaverage level of confidence in the police (a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10) and a substantial percent even
believe that their police force is better than any other police force in Mexico. We will see in the
following case of Baja California’s population is the opposite of Oaxaca’s regarding the police.
In Baja California, the police are shrouded with distrust; however, this distrust often spurs
institutional reform, not complacency.
Over the next few years after the first set of oral trials, there were fewer and fewer oral
trials in Salina Cruz and none publicized in the media. People demanded an end to the oral trials.
The case of Heidi two years later shows how the distrust in Salina Cruz lingered despite concrete
improvements in institutional performance. The reforms’ inability to turn the judiciary into a
legitimate and respected institution became apparent. The courts were now seen, “as corrupt as
before.”181 Despite an paragon of stellar institutional performance on behalf of the courts and
181
Anonymous Business Owner, Interview #3. Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, October 24, 2012.
95
police in Heidi’s trial, the public preferred to resort to protest and vigilantism.
Heidi Yoselin Basilio Gomez was a 10 year old girl who had been murdered. The
suspect in the case was her mom’s lover. Even before the trial began, the town of Salina Cruz
took to the streets, including the town mayor, to protests what they considered, “excessive
protection enjoyed by delinquents” in oral trials.182 Waiter, Carlos Leo Villavicencio Miguel,
was accused of the murder. As reported by the media, he had a fight with the girl's mother,
Evelia Basilio Gómez, and as an act of revenge, he raped and murdered her daughter, Heidi.183
Throughout the oral trail, the family of Heidi protested outside the courthouse threatening
to lynch Villacivencio Miguel if the court did not find him guilty.184 The protesters wanted the
court to find the defendant guilty and keep a presumed murderer off the street. According to
many who were present that day, any other verdict in their mind was not just, even regardless of
what occurred during the trial. They did not trust whatever may occur in the trial because they
believed the court to be capable of manipulating what occurred as it saw fit.
During the trial, there was a constant plea to put the defendant in jail and keep him away
from society. The protesters demanded that the State Human Rights Commission (Comisión
Estatal de Derechos Humanos - CEDH) not intervene for they feared that the CEDH would give
the defendant even more protection. The mayor, Héctor Becerril Morales, visited the church
where over 100 supporters of the family had amassed and pledged his support. He stated that he
182
Blake and Bohne, “The Judicial System in Mexico.”
183
Agustin Perez, “Confiesa Mesero Que Por Venganza Mató a Niña de Seis Años,” TV Bus Noticias Policiaca, June 9, 2009,
http://www.tvbus.tv/portal/index.php?op=noticias&seccion=policiaca&id=5630.
184
Jose Guadalupe Perez, “Exigen Justicia Contra Homicida,” Salina Cruz En Linea, October
2010,
http://www.salinacruzenlinea.com.mx/?stat=noticias&id=4482&tit=Exigen%20justicia%20contr
a%20homicida.
96
would personally go to the Oral Trial Court and plead that they do not let "a guilty man go
free."185 Another protest was organized by local preschool teachers to "demand punishment be
given to the murderer of Heidi."186 The superintendent, Blanca Margarita Hernández Sánchez,
explained that the protests were about justice: "The truth about the oral trial situation is that this
person [defendant] is able to be acquitted because they are crazy or they were on drugs." She
continued, "we want that this man be judged for that which he has done, and indicted with all the
weight of the law so that he will remain in jail."187
Unlike the earlier trials, the trial of Carlos Leo Villavicencio Miguel was extensive.
Prosecution case 611/SC/2009, the oral trial included 50 witnesses: 30 opposed to the defendant
and 20 in favor of Villavicencio Miguel. The police also performed as they were intended to.
They provided the needed investigative evidence in order for the judges to adjudicate justice.
During the trial, the police agents who investigated the case described how Villavicencio Miguel
tried to stab them with a knife and flee when they tried to arrest him. They submitted evidence
of scratches and bruises on Villavicencio Miguel’s body at the time of arrest. They explained
during the trial that the scratches and bruises were consistent with a struggle. They also
submitted evidence of bloodied clothes that they presumed he was wearing at the time of the
murder.188
185
Agustin Santiago, “Claman Justicia Familiares de Heidi Yoselín,” Salina Cruz En Linea,
December 5, 2010,
http://www.salinacruzenlinea.com.mx/?stat=noticias&id=2597&tit=Claman%20justicia%20fami
liares%20de%20Heidi%20Yosel%C3%ADn.
186
Agustin Santiago, “En Caso de Heidi Yoselín Maestros También Piden Justicia,” Salina Cruz
En Linea, October 23, 2010,
http://www.salinacruzenlinea.com.mx/?stat=noticias&id=2602&tit=En%20caso%20de%20Heidi
%20Yosel%C3%ADn%20Maestros%20tambi%C3%A9n%20piden%20justicia.
187
Ibid.
188
Perez, “Exigen Justicia Contra Homicida.”
97
Carlos Leo Villavicencio Miguel was found guilty. The judge, María de los Ángeles
Morales Díaz, sentenced him to 30 to 40 years in prison in Tehuantepec. However, many in the
public did not rejoice. They were angered over the possibility that the defendant could have
gone free and still demanded an end to the oral trials. They did not want to take the chance that
the next oral trial ended in a freed “criminal.”
The lynching of Jordi Alberto Gómez Ortega in 2010 built upon the insecurity left from
the murder of Heidi. At three in the morning on February 18th, Jordi Alberto Gómez Ortega, 16
years old, and Guillermo de Espinosa Rodríguez, 25 years old, got in a taxi which was driven by
Ángel Manuel Jiménez Vázquez and asked to go to the Costera highway. While in transit, they
assaulted the driver and demanded that he give them all his money.189
After the attack, a group of taxi drivers found Gómez Ortega and beat and burned him.
The taxi drivers explained that "they burned him because of the fear that the authorities of the
Deputy Attorney General would release him under the complacency of oral trials." Further
noting that the previous two times suspected criminals were brought before the courts, they were
inevitably found not guilty and set free.190
The lynching of Gómez Ortega was a direct refutation of the system of oral trials and the
system of justice provision by the courts “allowing presumed criminals to go free.” The crowd
had actually brought Gómez Ortega in front of the municipal office before they lynched him. The
police did not interfere with the crowd. The chatter in the mob--and the lack of response by
police—seemed to indicate that the police were complicit. One protester shouted, "The
189
Juan Manuel Alegria and Hiram Moreno, “Taxistas Asesinan a Delincuente,” En Marcha:
Realidad Municipal de Oaxaca, March 3, 2010,
http://www.revistaenmarcha.com.mx/reportaje/378-taxistas-asesinan-a-delincuente.html.
190
Blas, “Salina Cruz, Linchamiento y Corrupción.”
98
commander already told us to burn him before the army or troops arrive."191
In response, the mayor of Salina Cruz, Hector Becerril Morales—the same mayor who
protested at the court house to keep the defendant in the Heidi case locked-up—said that the
lynching was not acceptable: “the insecurity is a matter that wears on all of us and no-one is
exempt. What happened in the port cannot be excused nor pardoned, even despite the motives
that drove the taxi drivers to take justice into their own hands."192 The taxi drivers' motivation
was to avoid the same result as the previous two oral trials: the defendant was set free. They had
lost faith that the courts would provide justice. Hector Becerril Morales feared continued
vigilante means of justice and spoke-out against the protesters. He explained to them that the
real issue behind their discontent is the police, not the judiciary. He explained that the judicial
reforms are not to blame, they just were not implemented properly because the police still lack
sufficient reform: "The police have a grave problem of inefficiency because they do not have the
capacity, nor arms, nor transport to easily take control of a scene.," further stating that he was
waiting the approval of SEDENA, the Defense Secretariat, so that the police there could carry
guns.193 As obersved by Víctor Leonel Juan Martínez, a local journalist, "the lynchings are a
product of immense police failures, irregularities, corruption, lack of professionalization and
obstructive laws that characterize the inoperability of the institutions. For this the population
does not have trust in the institutions and prefers to take justice into their own hands.194
The case of Salina Cruz offers evidence that the reform in Oaxaca initially faltered
because the first trials were marred by police incompetence, which was subsequently blamed on
191
Alegria and Moreno, “Taxistas Asesinan a Delincuente.”
192
Ibid.
193
Ibid.
194
Juan Martinez, “Linchamiento: La (in)justicia de Los Pobres.”
99
the already illegitimate courts. Subsequent trials similarly failed to make convictions based on a
lack of police due process and performance. Despite the failings of the police, the history of
community policing offered the force a free-pass in the public scrutiny; and instead, the public
blamed the oral trials. I now turn to a different case where the adversarial reform in Baja
California has not witnessed the protests and non-participation in the rule-of-law as seen in
Oaxaca. To be sure, the reform process has had its critics in Baja California; however, these
critics were all framed within the discourse of working within the new system—there were no
demands for vigilantism incited by institutional failures.
Baja California
I show in the course of this section, that the reform effort in Baja California was
successful in part due to its extant trust in the institution. I show that Oaxaca and Baja California
had similar training and implementation efforts, but the public reaction to the reform was
substantially different, in large part due to trust in the institution. In Oaxaca and Mexico State,
the public criticized the institution and refused to accept it; whereas in Baja California, the public
criticized the institution, and demanded that it continued to reform to account for the remaining
failures.
Numerous studies have analyzed subnational democratization in Mexico – often
portraying Baja California on one side of the spectrum and Oaxaca on the other side (Mexico
State often falls in the middle somewhere). There are two main reasons posited for the advanced
democratization processes in Baja California compared to the rest of the country: a strong PAN
base as opposed to a strong PRD or PRI base and economic development in industry as opposed
100
to agriculture.195
Politically, Baja California was able to successfully navigate the opposition waters
achieving many municipal victories in the 1980s. Exceptionally, it transformed these municipal
victories into greater political gains. In 1989, Baja California elected (and was permitted) the
first opposition governor, Ernesto Ruffo (PAN). Coupled with decentralization in the 1990s, this
gubernatorial victory permitted Baja California an unprecedented level of state and institutional
autonomy to democratize.196
The same neoliberal policies that hurt many states’ civil society and formal institutional
development (e.g., Oaxaca, Michoacán, Guerrero, Chiapas) have arguably helped Baja
California. The rise of the maquiladora system after NAFTA in the 1990s, and a burgeoning
middle class with business ties to the United States, worked to create institutions in Baja
California that were no longer beholden to the clientelistic network of the dying hegemony.197 As
is apparent, economic development in Mexico, much like political development occurs
incredibly uneven across the 32 Mexican states. The same policies that decimated the
agricultural industry in the central and southern states created wealthy industrial centers—
complete with a middle class—in the northern region. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Baja
195
Chappell Lawson, “Development and Democratization in Mexico: A State Level Analysis of
Political Change,” Policy Studies Review Summer.Autumn, no. 15 (1998); Jonathan Hiskey and
Shaun Bowler, “Local Context and Democratization in Mexico,” American Journal of Political
Science 49, no. 1 (January 2005): 57–71; Jonathan Hiskey, “The Political Economy of
Subnational Economic Recovery in Mexico,” Latin American Research Review 40, no. 1
(February 2005); Eisenstadt, Courting Democracy in Mexico; Bruhn, “PRD Local Governments
in Michoacán: Implications for Mexico’s Democratization Process”; David Shirk, “New
Federalism in Mexico: Implications for Baja California and the Cross-Border Region,” Briefing
Paper for Fronterizo Policy Luncheon (July 1999).
196
Shirk, “New Federalism in Mexico: Implications for Baja California and the Cross-Border
Region.”
197
Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism, 37.
101
California’s civil society prospered under the new economic and political policies and
arrangements.
However, this struggle for independence from the central one-party authoritarian rule
started long before the 1980s. It was long considered by both locals and other Mexicans to be a
frontier region which operated with slightly less central authority than the rest of Mexico.198
Indeed the first local movement for autonomy in Baja California was in 1917 with a demand that
the territory be governed by a local Baja Californian.199 Nevertheless, the PRI dominated Baja
California life up until the 1980s but unlike other states, its control was weak. 200 Indeed, by
many accounts society voted for opposition parties won seats (that were not given to them) as far
back as 1968 in both Tijuana and Mexicali.201
Unlike the case of Mexico State, this electoral democratization was complimented by a
rise in pluralism and public participation. A number of innovations built solid connections
between society and governmental (not party-based) institutions:
“[Tijuana] sought to reconstruct its relationship with citizens by creating three new
channels for communication, dialogue, and influence: elected neighborhood committees
that would replace the traditional clientelistic leaders; a participatory planning structure
that employed the legal figure of [Municipal Planning Council]; and a join businessgovernment roundtable for long-term planning on economic issues….”202
These types of participatory democratic structures involved the community in the
democratization process. As the case of Mexico State illustrates, alternations in political party is
not sufficient to bring about societal trust and participation. In Baja California, the underpinning
198
Baja California is the farthest geographically form Mexico City that one can be.
199
Selee, Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico. Pg 104
200
Ibid.
201
Ibid. Pg 105 -106
202
Ibid. Ph 116
102
of societal engagement during the democratization process has helped the judiciary (and other
institutions) to maintain and increase trust throughout the past 30 years.
This gathering of trust in the institution is a key factor spurring acceptance of the judicial
reforms. As noted by Cleary and Stokes (2009a), acceptance does not come in the form of
joyous celebration and admiration. Instead, democracy mandates a culture of skepticism which
turns citizens into watchdogs and thus propels institutions forward. This culture of skepticism is
very different than the distrust seen in Oaxaca and Mexico State. In these states, where political
liberalization is still forthcoming and economic liberalization had adverse consequences in
society, institutions have not been granted the same amount of trust. Reforms stall because they
are applied to institutions that have not sufficiently developed in terms of autonomy and strength.
Therefore, the public sees the reforms as an attempt at political manipulation or even worse,
gross incompetence.
Similar to Oaxaca, Baja California received a substantial amount of resources prior to
implementation of the reforms. Overall, the implementation in Baja California involved years of
preparation by judges, attorneys and investigators. They participated in education training in
Baja California, but due to close proximity to the United States, they also received trainings in
the United States.203 The American Bar Association Rule-of-law Initiative created "sister" court
houses in Tijuana and San Diego.204 The Trans-Border Institute in San Diego implemented many
trainings and activities in Tijuana. The Autonomous University of Baja California and the
University of San Diego offer online training courses. External actors from South America also
203
Sandra Dibble, “New Oral Trials Make a Debut in Baja California,” UT San Diego, February
5, 2011, http://wwww.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/05/mexican-states-transitioningtoward-open-judicial-/?page=2#article.
204
Ibid.
103
played a role with foreign judicial experts from Argentina, Sergio Gabriel Torres, Diego Javier
and Ricardo Angel Basilico Slupski led symposiums on their experiences implementing the
adversarial system in Argentina in 1992. 205
Overall, Baja California saw 12 internationally-based events on the adversarial system,
28 domestic courses, and 2,978 hours of training.206 The reformed courts have been successful in
bettering performance upon implementation. It has increasingly taken on more and more
hearings, going from 86 in August 2010 to 1,456 in December 2012.
Figure 14: Increase of Capacity in the Accusatorial System in Baja California207
Number of Hearings Under the New System of Penal Justice,
Baja California
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
2010 2010 2011 2011 2011 2011 2012 2012 2012 Quarter 3 Quarter 4 Quarter 1 Quarter 2 Quarter 3 Quarter 4 Quarter 1 Quarter 2 Quarter 3
Similar to Oaxaca, the initial reaction to the reforms was also positive. Dr. Daniel
Gonzalez, from USAID's Support Program for Security and Justice (Programa de Apoyo en
205
Jose Mercado, “En Justicia Fallan Quienes La Imparten,” La Voz de La Frontera, April 30,
2011, http://www.oem.com.mx/lavozdelafrontera/notas/n2060256.htm.
206
Rommel Moreno Manjarrez, “Reformas Constitucionales Al Sistema Penal de Mexico y Su
Implmenacion En El Estado de Baja California” (Procurador General de Justicia del estado de
Baja California, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washinton DC, December 4, 2012).
207
“Nuevo Sistema de Justicia Penal, Baja California: Informacion Del Tercer Trimestre Del
2010 a Cuarto Trimestre Del 2012” (Poder Judicial: Consejo de la Judicatura del Estado, 2012
2010).
104
Seguridad y Justicia) confirmed that the reform increased the performance of the judiciary.208
The president of a bar association, Colegio de Abogados Estado 29, Jesús Guillermo López Ley,
spoke of justness and noted that that the greatest benefit of the new system is the application of
fairly-processed sentences, as well as increased rights extended to defendants. 209 Andrade
Ramírez, a deputy state attorney general in Baja California, agreed and stated that "the new
system has spurred her office to conduct a greater number of investigations that are more
science-based." 210 The increased technological capacity of the Baja California justice system
included a $4.2 million forensic testing facility in Mexicali.211
Whereas Oaxaca’s courts failed to provide proof of a “better” institution (largely because
of the police’s failures), Baja California took extra care to ensure that the first trial was a
successful production.212 Attorney General of Baja California, Rommel Moreno Manjarrez
extended the implementation date of the trial in order to ensure that the training and
infrastructure was in place prior to the first oral trial. And alternative justice mechanisms were
put into place prior to the oral trials in order to depressurize the public ministry's work load to
allow for a focused effort on the transition. 213
The first trial in Baja California, scheduled for February 2, 2011, was the case of
208
Jose de Jesus Jimenez Vega, “Críticas Contra Juicios Orales Serán Rebasadas Por El Nuevo
Sistema de Justicia Penal,” Organización Editorial Mexicana / La Prensa, March 23, 2011,
http://www.oem.com.mx/laprensa/notas/n2013717.htm.
209
Sonia Garcia Ochoa, “Juicios Orales Impartirán Justicia Con Celeridad,” Organización
Editorial Mexicana / El Sol de Tijuana, November 24, 2007,
http://www.oem.com.mx/esto/notas/n501412.htm.
210
Dibble, “New Oral Trials Make a Debut in Baja California.”
211
Ibid.
212
Alejandra de las Casas, Interview, November 9, 2012.
213
Nestor Cruz, “Baja California: Juicios Orales Hasta 2010,” Organización Editorial Mexicana,
February 23, 2009, http://www.oem.com.mx/esto/notas/n1058020.htm.
105
Rigoberto Acevedo River who was on trial for car theft. 214 The first witness was Armando
Pulido, whose wife's car was stolen. Armando said that he watched the car drive away from the
window of his house. He called the police. The police eventually caught up with the vehicle.
As described by one witness at the trial, the evidence was clear cut against Rigoberto Acevedo,
"authorities said the vehicle’s lock had been broken, and that Acevedo was at the wheel" when
they found the car.215 The defense offered a counter argument saying that he did not steal the car,
it was given to him by somebody. After nine hours of trial, the defendant was found guilty.216
He received four and half years in jail and a large fine. After the trial, his lawyer217, Fernando
Ramírez, cried that the trial was "a work of theatre, it was manufactured, it was made-up.”218
Few other protests were heard.
Newspapers hailed the trial and the reform as a success with various praises, such as
“[this] demonstrates the functionality of the new criminal justice system, since the coordination
of the various agencies responsible for public safety and the provision of justice is essential for
anyone trying to bypass the law.”219 Since this first trial, Baja California has continued to expand
the role of the judiciary and its functioning. It was written over 120,346 expert reports,
214
Although the defendant did not show up to the court house on the day of the trial, a warrant
for his arrest was issued and the trial commenced a few days later. Sandra Dibble, “Defendant
Fails to Appear for Baja’s First Oral Trial,” UT San Diego, February 2, 2011,
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/02/defendant-fails-appear-bajas-first-oral-trial.
215
Dibble, “New Oral Trials Make a Debut in Baja California.”
216
Ibid.
217
Along with lawyers Fernando Rosales and Alonso Palacios.
218
“Una Farsa El Juicio Oral,” Zeta Tijuana, February 15, 2011,
http://zetatijuana.com/html/Edicion1924/Reportajez_Una_farsa_el_juicio_oral.html.
219
Manuel Cordero, “Acreedor a Primer Juicio Oral,” El Sol de Tijuana, February 4, 2011,
www.oem.com.mx/elsoldetijuana/notas/n1952631.htm.
106
completed 10,583 DNA analyses, 10,647 fingerprints, and 3,050 ballistics220 as opposed to
Oaxaca which has seen a decline of oral trial activity.
Another difference with the Oaxaca case is the role of the police. In Oaxaca, much of the
blame for the failures of justice is put on the courts and the judicial reform in particular, in Baja
California, the police are specifically targeted for hindering the court’s effort. This criticism
serves the reform process well. It essentially serves as an oversight watch of potential
institutional problems. This public vigilance pushes the institution to self-police and correct
these imperfections in operating procedure.
Two main areas of concern arose regarding the police’s role in the new system: training
and impunity. Renowned lawyer John Velasquez, for example, expressed this concern. 221 But
this situation of the police force in Baja California can hardly be compared to Oaxaca. Up until
May 2011, Baja California was one of the only two states who had an accredited and certified
center for training and professionalizing the police force222. By the end of 2011, Coahuila,
Mexico State, and DF also had centers. 223 Similarly, it has offered municipal police courses in
the new adversarial system in an effort to integrate both rule-of-law institutions into a new mode
of existence. Since 2008, hundreds of municipal police in Baja California have completed
courses such as “Strengthening Police Action” and “The Penal Process of Oral Trials."224 There
220
Moreno Manjarrez, “Reformas Constitucionales Al Sistema Penal de Mexico y Su
Implmenacion En El Estado de Baja California.”
221
Montserrat Buendia, “Infuncionales, Juicios Orales: Juan Velásquez,” El Sol de Tijuana, June
4, 2010, http://www.oem.com.mx/elsoldetijuana/notas/n1659487.htm.
222
There were four centers in the country. Two were federal, one was in Baja California, and
one was in Guanajato.
223
“Evaluation of Confidence Testing in Mexico.”
224
“49 Police Officers Trained for New Judicial Penal System in Tijuana,” Justice in Mexico;
University of San Diego, May 16, 2011, http://justiceinmexico.org/2011/05/16/49-policeofficers-trained-for-new-judicial-penal-system-in-tijuana/.
107
are differences of opinion as to whether these trainings came as a result of the public pressure
regarding the police’s role in the new system.225 Regardless of source, something has motivated
the institutions to address one of the lingering faults in the institution post-reform.
The other main fault widely expressed by society is police impunity. In one trial,
Fernando Alonso Salas Cereceres, a former Ministerial Police officer and his accomplice Juan
Carlos Tovar Rey confessed to robbing and physically assaulting a woman. In court, they were
sentenced to four years in prison. After one night in jail, the Third Chamber of the High Court of
the State reversed the decision and set the two free. The judge cited their lack of criminal record
as the reason for the reversal.226 People suspect that the real reason was the officer’s personal tie
to the law enforcement institutions.
Exacerbating this suspicion, the first trial against a sitting ministerial police officer was
cancelled. In 2011, agent Montelongo was accused of extortion of a local businessman who had
to leave the city for fear of reprisals from the police. The judges cancelled the trial due to
irregularities in the prosecution of the case.227 While some look to this case as evidence of
continued police impunity under the new system, other people in the street take a more optimistic
approach. I have heard it pointed out on numerous occasions that ten years ago, the trial would
have never been started in the first place.
“Poco a poco” is the expression used to validate this defense, meaning, little-by-little.
People continue to engage the institutions and make demands regarding various faults (e.g.,
police impunity) because they have seen the institution respond to society’s changing tolerance
225
Gonzales Villalobos, Interview. Mexico, D.F.
226
Jaime Delgado, “Gana Ex Ministerial Recurso En El TSJE,” El Mexicano, March 25, 2012,
http://www.el-mexicano.com.mx/informacion/noticias/1/3/estatal/2012/03/25/558761/gana-exministerial-recurso-en-el-tsje.aspx.
227
Ibid.
108
regarding institutional corruption and incompetence in the past (e.g., starting police trainings).
To someone unfamiliar with the Mexican system of justice, this example of police impunity as a
paragon of moving in the right direction may be confusing. It is important to remember that the
key point of reference is looking at the community historically and not comparing relatively to
the wealthy neighbor next door.
To be sure, critics in Baja California remain vocal about the need for continued reform in
certain areas, but what distinguishes Baja California from Oaxaca and Mexico State is that this
dialog is more akin to constructive criticism, meant to push the reforms forward, rather than
opposition protests, meant to dismantle the reforms. 228 This dialog in Baja California, critical yet
helpful, is what Cleary and Stokes (2009a) refer to as democracy and the culture of skepticism.
Through survey data in a handful of Mexican states, they show that democratizing institutions
are often treated with skepticism in Mexico, as opposed to outright trust.229 This skepticism acts
as an accountability lever, meant to keep the institution in line with societal demands. Indeed,
Baja California, owing to its history of early democratization was one of the first states to see the
rise of independent institutions.
Although Baja California’s courts suffered errors along the implementation process and
continue to deal with cracks in the system (notably, police impunity), the institution and its quest
at reform is accepted and warrants public participation. As of March 2013, the state congress in
Baja California was continuing to expand the role of the adversarial system. A proposal being
discussed in congress dictates that the oral trials be expanded to include the majority of all
crimes committed in the state. This includes the most serious criminal offenses. This
228
Gabriela Ortiz Quintero, Interview, October 18, 2012; Hector Valle, Interview, December 5,
2012; de las Casas, Interview.
229
Cleary and Stokes, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism.
109
progression of the reform could not stand in starker contrast to Oaxaca and Mexico State where
the adversarial reform is in the process of existing only on paper and not in practice.
110
Chapter 5: Concluding Remarks
In the preceding four chapters, I offered a critique on the conventional wisdom
surrounding how the rule-of-law institutions decrease crime. I show that focusing reform efforts
on institutional performance is not enough to reduce crime. The courts and police also need
trust. These insights should offer the reformers in Mexico and other countries that are
contemplating reforms a blueprint for moving forward.
There is little evidence of how to climb out of this stagnating trust. In his seminal work,
Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Bo Rothstein explains that when institutions lose trust, it
is incredibly difficult for them to regain it, and this situation is what is known as a “social trap.”
He offers two solutions to social traps:
1. “First, the deliberate action of the state and its leaders is crucial. Social trust comes
from above and is destroyed from above. Simply put, they must be able to send
trustworthy signals that they will guarantee and respect the impartiality of the relevant
public institutions. Admittedly, the supply of such leaders is an unsolved problem.”
2. “A second conclusion is the importance of institutions that allow for deliberation and
communication.”230
Mexican states have different histories with this attempt to crawl out of the social trap.
The first criterion, the deliberate action of the state and its leaders, has been seen in pockets
across Mexico to varying degrees in the past four decades. This was clearly seen in Baja
California and Oaxaca. Leaders in both states went to great lengths to communicate with the
public that a large-scale reform was underway and what this meant for the judiciary.
Unfortunately in the case of Oaxaca, this leadership initiative was not sufficient to get out of the
social trap of distrust. Mexico State, on the other hand, completely lacked leadership initiative:
230
Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, 2005.
111
skepticism of the intent of the reform and doubt regarding the leaders’ ability to implement it
haunted the reform throughout its infancy.
The second criterion to regaining social trust per Rothstein’s analysis is the institution’s
capacity for deliberation and communication with internal and external actors. In other words,
can the institution adapt for internal and external grievances should it find it necessary? Outside
actors, interested people in society, can monitor the institutional functioning and act as an
accountability lever. This allows grievances, such as a feeling of anger because of perceived
police impunity, to be address in an open forum that stimulates debate on how to address the
grievance. In the three case studies, I find this second criterion to be of the utmost importance.
In all three cases, the public was critical of the courts, but only in Baja California did the public
engage in meaningful interaction with the courts in an effort to address continued grievances and
performance issues.231
As shown the preceding chapters, getting out of Rothstein’s social trap (i.e., regaining
trust in the institution) is a necessary precondition to institutional reform. Most policy makers
231
The third criterion, creating an impartial and objective institution that all involved groups find
mutually advantageous, was not able to be addressed in this regard. The reason that Rothstein
calls for this criterion is because this sort of institutional design is the most effective at keeping
corruption at bay and societal trust intact. The logic here is similar to free and fair elections in
political parties: although Group A wants to have rigged elections (in their favor), they know
that Group B may instead wind up in power and those checks and balances could help them in
the future. This logic is not easily transferable to Mexico’s rule-of-law institutions because of
the overt and proven threat of death for non-compliance in partiality. If Group A wants to have a
rigged trial, and Group A happens to have connections to Los Zetas (a particularly powerful
group of narcotraffickers), they do not care so much about future checks and balances in case
they ever harmed and need the justice system to prosecute someone on their behalf. Leaders in
Mexico are incapable of convincing criminal groups that an impartial justice system works best
for everyone in the long run. Overcoming this barrier is the most difficult aspect of institutional
reform. The adversarial system was seen as a possible remedy because all trials are transparent
and the judges are trained as impartial arbitrators between the defense and prosecution instead of
as active investigators into the case. Despite this disincentivized structure to targeting judges for
their partiality toward certain cases, narcotraffickers still target and kill judges and other legal
officials.
112
assume that reform based on performance is the cure to mistrust. I show that this logic has been
flawed in past attempts at reform (see Chapter 2) and currently (see Chapter 4). Shallow
institutional reform only begets shallow institutional approval. Yet much rhetoric continues to
insinuate that trust will follow automatically after the reform is implemented. For example,
Marco Antonio Higuera Lopez writes that "[The reform] derives a change in culture which
requires a more active citizenry, who denounces and involves themselves in the process..."232 We
clearly see that this is not the case in many states’ experiences with the reform (e.g., Mexico
State, Oaxaca). People are more apt to involve themselves in the rule-of-law institutions when
the institution has trust—regardless of whether a reform has occurred.
The focus of this dissertation has been to show that the judiciary’s ability to deter crime
only works when the institution holds some trust in society. Without trust, I argue, the public
does not participate in the rule-of-law (i.e., they do not report crimes to authorities) and because
of this, crimes continue to go unpunished and there is no deterrence for would-be-criminals.
Through a historical look at institutional reform in Chapter 2, I aimed to explain that trust
has been evasive through numerous reforms in the police and judiciary. In Chapter 3, I
empirically tested the claim that trust in the institution can in fact act as a deterrence to violence.
The implications of this finding are that the judiciary needs to seek to gain trust if the reforms are
to work in reducing violence. I discuss three case studies that have dealt with the reform process
and show where they were successful and where they were not. Through information derived
from field research, surveys and interviews in Oaxaca, Mexico State, and Baja California in 2012
and 2013, in Chapter 4 I illustrated that trust is needed if the reform process is to succeed. I
232
Carlos Véase Natarén Nandayapa, “Breves Reflexiones Sobre Algunos de Los Retos En El
Diseño Del Nuevo Proceso Penal Ordinario,” Suprema Corte de Justicia de La Nación El
sistema de Justicia Penal en México: retos y perspectivas (2008): 72–78.
113
argue that people are less active in participating in rule-of-law institutions (i.e., calling police,
denouncing crimes in court, etc) when they do not believe the rule-of-law institutions are
legitimate. I offer an empirically-based critique of legal theories of adversarial justice systems
which fail to take into account social acceptance and participation in the institution as a key
determinant to the justice system’s success in delivering desirable outcomes. Along with Cleary
and Stokes 2009a, Rothstein 2005, and Tyler 2006, I illustrate that institutional trust is a key
factor in determining development in governance. In otder to gain this trust, leaders must send
trustworthy signals that they will guarantee and respect the impartiality of the relevant public
institutions.” 233
The findings have implications for reforms of political institutions. These findings would
suggest that underlying processes of democratization can be a bigger determinant in the success
of an institution than institutional reforms. More specifically, these findings call for more
inquiry into the relationship between historical processes of democratization and trust in the
institution. Although researchers have long attempted to examine the role of trust in political
institutions, the concept is elusive to measurement and often understanding. This study would
provide a valid and reliable methodological foundation upon which to build future studies on
trust in the judiciary in other countries or other political institutions in Mexico. These findings
also have relevance in public policy, suggesting to policy makers that the benefits of a structural
reform in the judiciary will remain obscured until trust in the institution is reconciled.
I would suggest that scholars wishing to continue this line of research expand upon the
foundation set here. Theory building often suffers at the hands of individual interests. Individual
adaptations of theory—including terminology, measurements, and model—will best accomplish
233
Bo Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Series of Institutional Design
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
114
one’s research goals, yet building off of one theoretical foundation is necessary for rigorous
theory building. Mancur Olsen’s collective action problem persists234.
A logical flow of future research would be to expand this analysis to the rest of Latin
America where similar judicial reforms have taken place. Michael McCullough, director of the
American Bar Association's Rule-of-law Initiative—one of the groups working to train the new
generation of lawyers in Mexico and other Latin American countries—notes that implementation
of a judicial reforms can be "threatening" anywhere.235 Learning the historical context in which it
is being implemented will ensure its success.
A last word on trade-offs, weakness, and reflections on bias
Social science is a tricky business. Given scarcity of time and resources, researchers are
faced with a trade-off between qualitatively exploring the mechanisms at work and historical
processes and quantitatively discovering the generalizability of the relationships. Even with an
even-handed attempt at both of these approaches, both the quantitative and qualitative analyses
are often marred by missing or otherwise problematic data. I have tried to make up for some
potential weaknesses in my argument by including both quantitative and qualitative chapters. In
the following section I discuss specific choice I made in an effort to ameliorate potential
weaknesses. These include issues within the operationalization of key variables, case study
selection, latent variable bias, and researcher bias.
Quantitatively, the research would have benefited from better statistics on trust and
234
Olsen, Mancur; The Logic of Collective Action Harvard Economic Studies (1965)
235
Michael McCullough, Interview. Mexico, D.F., September 10, 2012.
115
participation in the rule-of-law. The extent to which people report crimes or engage the courts in
Mexico remains elusive. Because data do not exist on the subject, I addressed this portion of the
argument in the case studies where specific instances of non-participation could be found. The
case studies show how and why people participate in the rule-of-law, whether it be through
interacting with the police and courts or through imposing vigilante justice.
I decided to use a measure of trust offered by extant survey data from ICESI. I believe
this indicator sufficiently captures the abstract notion of trust, but it is not without its flaws. The
question I used asks whether the respondent has a lot of confidence in the judiciary, some
confidence, little confidence or no confidence. The question leaves room for much interpretation
on behalf of the respondent. The respondent may interpret the question as “confidence in its
ability to efficiently function” or perhaps “confidence in its ability to justly function.” Despite
the possibility for numerous interpretations, I am confident that the overwhelming majority of
respondents interpreted it as a general sense of confidence, and this, I believe is a close
approximation to trust. I am secure with this belief because when I ask non-political scientists
what they think trust means, I often get the response that it “confidence” or “trust.”
Qualitatively, I believe that my case studies sufficiently explored how and why trust in
the institution was (or was not) affected by the reforms and what this resulted because of this.
However, the case studies were limited due to very practical concerns of violence. First and
foremost, the case study selection was limited due to concerns of violence. The state of
Chihuahua should have been among the group studied. And while violence is diminishing, it is
still at uncomfortably high levels. Furthermore, the history of femicide in Chihuahua added
additional concerns. Secondly, I chose to look at three cases which inherently meant that I may
time and energy was split three ways. I felt it was important to show all the different experiences
116
a state could have with the reform; however, this meant that I had less time per case study. I was
not able to spend as much time in Mexico State as I felt necessary because of violence around
Toluca. I tried to remedy this by using more second-hand sources.
The biggest potential fault of this research is a potential latent variable. Research in
social science is consistently plagued by omitted variables. This project is no exception. It is
possible that the underlying trends in institutional mistrust are not responsible for sabotaging the
reform effort in some states. It is possible that there is some other variable that states with little
trust also have in common—and this variable is what hinders the reform effort. I cannot prove
that this is not the case. However, I tried to alleviate fears of an omitted variable by illustrating
in the case studies what caused the reform to fail. In the case of Mexico State, the reform did not
stick because the judiciary was seen as a bargaining chip for power over an institution with
actual functions to perform. In the case of Oaxaca, the reform did not stick because it was
assumed to work against the interest of the people (by letting suspected criminals go free). Both
of these cases, while different in substance, are similar in that they both point to the lack of trust
in the institution as the impetus. The case of Baja California shows that trust helped the reform
effort take hold and also continue to push the reform forward by continued watchdog behavior
created by trust. The societal interaction, deliberation, and expression of grievances (so that they
may be addressed) are an indication of trust in the institution as opposed to apathy and also an
indication that the reform is advancing. These case studies help to flesh out the interaction
between trust and reform and their combined ability to reduce violence.
Moving on to another potential weakness of this dissertation, it is possible that one of my
many attributes (white, female, American, middle-class) affected the way people interacted with
me and the data and/or answers they provided me. I took many measures to counter this possible
117
bias in interviews, focus groups and surveys in Mexico. For my surveys and focus groups, I
hired a research assistant in each state with money provided by the American University Vice
Provost Office for Graduate Research. All three research assistants were Mexican-born college
students. In Oaxaca and Baja California, the assistants were men, in Mexico State the assistant
was a woman. These people conducted approximately 75 percent of the surveys. To see if a bias
was occurring with my research assistants, I conducted 25 percent of the surveys. Upon
comparing the groups, there was no statistically significant difference between responses to me
and responses to my Mexican research assistants, male or female. In regards to interviews, I
cannot be sure that there was no respondent bias due to my race, gender, class, accent or other
characteristic. I do not think this respondent bias, if it exists, is particularly large since I found
the sentiments expressed to me would also be found in other media such as newspaper articles.
Lastly, Mexico scholar, Andreas Schedler astutely calls into question the use of a
“democratic transition” paradigm.236 He states that scholars have been hesitant to label any
transition finished without evidence of democratic consolidation at the highest level. What
exactly constitutes a consolidated democracy is still ambiguous. Many authors point to political
liberalization in the form of increased party competition as the key quality of a consolidated
democracy. Others look to increasing representation and pluralism in the form of social
movements and social rights. Still others say the functioning of the main political and social
institutions are paramount to democratic consolidation. Whichever camp you ascribe to, all of
these facets are indisputably critical to democratic governance. In this research project, I do not
offer a comprehensive analysis of the current state of Mexican democratization; rather, I look at
one facet of democratization, the functioning of the political institutions, and illustrate how this
236
Andrea Schedler, “What Is Democratic Consolidation?,” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 2
(April 1998): 91–107.
118
is affected by histories of undemocratic behavior. I chose to focus on this specific aspect
because political institutions provide the best hope for ending the violence that ravages the
country. The subject of the police would have benefited from its own project, and indeed, there
are many dissertations solely focused on police. The project would have also benefited from the
addition of other institutions. There was a trade-off in my research in focusing on one institution
at a cost of missing the larger democratizing picture. I consciously, and implicitly, chose to focus
mainly on the judiciary in this manuscript. I included discussions and analyses of the police
prominently throughout the dissertation because of the interconnection between the police and
judiciary in imposing a rule-of-law. The inclusion of other institutions would have limited the
time spent understanding the mechanisms at play, which I feel are a crucial part of the analysis.
Murray Edelman once expressed concern over the academic focus on “trendy” issues, of
which this research would undoubtedly be accused. 237 The drug-war of modern Mexico is
unequivocally the next big issue of the day; just as the Zapatista uprising of the 1990s and the
ousting of PRI in 2000 commanded scholastic attention. Opposing Edelman, I believe that these
trendy issues are worthy of scholarly attention. The key is to ensure that they are treated as
manifestations of larger processes at work. Throughout the dissertation, I attempt to paint the
broader context in which my specific focus of study is based. Historical grounding and case
comparisons ensures that this seemingly narrowly-focused dissertation avoids being an
idiosyncratic story on the judiciary in a time of great violence and instead contributes to a
broader understanding of political institutions and their role in a democratizing society.
237
Edelman, Murray; Constructing the Political Spectacle University of Chicago Press 1988
119
Appendix 1: FASP Evaluation238
238
Sistema de Seguimiento y Evaluación, “Diagnostico de Las Corporaciones Policiales
Estatales.”
120
121
Appendix 2: Oaxaca survey respondents’ origin
122
Appendix 3: Mexico State survey respondents’ origin
123
Appendix 4: Baja California survey respondents’ origin
124
Appendix 5: Survey
----- English ---Thank you for participating in this survey. This research contributes to a doctoral thesis in political science and
your responses are only for academic purposes. Your responses are anonymous. Please, do not write your name on
the survey. When you have finished, please put it in the envelope provided.
Gender Male or Female
Age
_______________
Where were you born?
________________________
What do you study?
________________________
Do you believe the courts in this state are just? (Mark a number)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
least just <------------------------------------------------------------> most just
10
Do you believe the courts in this state are efficient? (Mark a number)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
inefficient <------------------------------------------------------------> efficient
10
If you had to choose, which is worse?
____ That an innocent person goes to jail
____ That a guilty person goes free
Have you been to the courts in the past yar to address one of the following issues (mark “yes” or “no”)
Yes
___
___
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
____
____
To file a complaint against someone
To deal with a traffic ticket
To deal with a problem with someone
To respond to a crime
Other reason
If you answered “yes”, please answer the following questions (mark “yes” or “no”)
Yes
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
Did the courts resolve the problem
Did the matter receive sufficient attention
Did the matter receive due process
Do you believe the police in this state are just? (Mark a number)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
least just <------------------------------------------------------------> most just
10
Do you believe the police in this state are efficient? (Mark a number)
125
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
inefficient <------------------------------------------------------------> efficient
10
Have you called the police in the past yar to address one of the following issues (mark “yes” or “no”)
Yes
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
to report a crime
to report an accident
to report other problems
If you answered “yes”, please answer the following questions (mark “yes” or “no”)
Yes
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
Did the police resolve the problem
Did the matter receive sufficient attention
Did the police act efficiently
Have you been detained by the police in the past 5 years?
Yes
No
If you answered “yes”, please answer the following question: Were you mistreated?
Yes
No
Please, read the following situation and respond to the final question: A 30 year old man was found dead due to
gunshot wounds in the alley of {insert city}. Two witnesses said they saw Juan in the alley the same morning as the
corpse was found. The police didn’t find incriminatory evidence but they received testimony from the two
witnesses saying that Juan was in the alley. {City} just reformed its judicial system and Juan will be given an oral
trial. Juan is declared innocent for lack of evidence. Do you agree with this verdict?
Yes
No
At what point do you have confidence in the courts in general (mark a number)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Less confidence <------------------------------------------------------------> More confidence
Do you believe that they are better or worse than the majority of other states?
Worse
Better
At what point do you have confidence in the police in general (mark a number)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Less confidence <------------------------------------------------------------> More confidence
Do you believe that they are better or worse than the majority of other states?
Worse
Better
Do you know that the courts have implemented reforms including oral trials and the presumption of innocent until
proven guilty? Yes
No
If you answered “yes”, please answer the following questions (mark “yes” or “no”)
Yes
___
___
No
____
____
Do you think they will make the courts more efficient
Do you think they will make the courts more just
Do you know that the police have implemented reforms including professionalization classes and more resources to
fight crime?
Yes
No
126
If you answered “yes”, please answer the following questions (mark “yes” or “no”)
Yes
___
___
No
____
____
Do you think they will make the police more efficient
Do you think they will make the police more just
Saturday at three in the afternoon a group of armed men stole a car, throwing the driver to the ground. You see all
of this from your house window, what is the first thing you do?
____ Help the driver of the car off the street
____ Call the police
____ Call a friend and say what happened
Have you heard of the Merida Initiative? Yes
No
----Spanish----Gracias por participar en esta encuesta. Esta investigación es parte de una tesis doctoral en ciencias políticas y sus
respuestas son para fines académicos solamente. Sus respuestas son anónimas. Por favor, no ponga su nombre en
la encuesta. Cuando hayas terminado con la encuesta, por favor póngala en el sobre provisto.
Sexo
Hombre o Mujer
Edad
_______________
¿Dónde naciste tú?
¿Qué estudias tú?
________________________
________________________
En {ciudad}, ¿crees que los juzgados son justos? (marque un número):
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Lo menos justo <------------------------------------------------------------> Lo más justo
En {ciudad}, ¿crees que los juzgados son eficientes? (marque un número):
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
ineficiente <------------------------------------------------------------> eficiente
10
Si tienes que elegir, ¿qué es peor?
____ Que una persona inocente vaya a la cárcel
____ Que un culpable siga en libertad
¿Has estado en el juzgado en los años anteriores al abordar uno de los asuntos siguientes (marque "Sí" o "No"):
Sí
___
___
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
____
____
¿para presentar una demanda en contra de alguien?
¿para responder a una infracción de tráfico?
¿para responder a un conflicto con alguien?
¿para responder a un delito criminal?
¿otra razón?
127
Si respondiste que sí, por favor conteste las siguientes preguntas (marque "Sí" o "No"):
Sí
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
¿el juzgado resolvió el problema?
¿el asunto recibió atención suficiente por parte de el juzgado?
¿el asunto recibió el debido proceso?
En {ciudad}, ¿crees que la policía es justa? (marque un número):
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
menos justo <------------------------------------------------------------> más justo
10
En {ciudad}, ¿crees que la policía es eficiente? (marque un número):
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
ineficiente <------------------------------------------------------------> eficiente
10
Has llamado a la policía en los últimos años con el fin de obtener ayuda en cualquier de los siguientes (marque "Sí"
o "No"):
Sí
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
¿para reportar un crimen?
¿para informar de un accidente?
¿reportar otros problemas?
Si respondiste que sí, por favor conteste las siguientes preguntas (marque "Sí" o "No"):
Sí
___
___
___
No
____
____
____
¿la policía resolvió el problema?
¿el asunto recibió atención suficiente por parte de la policía?
¿la policía actuó de manera eficiente al tratar el problema?
¿Has sido detenido por la policía en los últimos cinco años?
Sí
No
Si respondiste que sí, por favor conteste la siguiente pregunta: ¿Fuiste tratado justa e imparcialmente?
No
Sí
Por favor, lea la siguiente situación y responda al final a la pregunta: Un hombre de 30 años fue hallado muerto por
heridas de bala en un callejón de {ciudad}. Dos testigos dicen que vieron a "Juan" en el callejón la misma mañana
que el cuerpo fue hallado. La policía no encontró pruebas incriminatorias, pero recibió testimonio de los testigos
confirmando que Juan estuvo en el callejón en el momento del asesinato. {ciudad} acaba de reformar su sistema
judicial y "Juan" tiene garantizado un juicio oral. Juan es declarado inocente en el juicio por falta de pruebas. ¿Está
de acuerdo con este veredicto?
Sí
No
¿Hasta qué punto tienes confianza en los juzgados en {ciudad} en general? (marque un número):
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
menos confianza <------------------------------------------------------------> mucha confianza
¿Crees que son mejores o peores que la mayoría de los otros estados? (marque uno de los siguientes):
Igual
Mejor
Peor
128
¿Hasta qué punto tienes confianza en la policía en {ciudad} en general? (marque un número):
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
menos confianza <------------------------------------------------------------> mucha confianza
¿Crees que son mejores o peores que la mayoría de los otros estados? (marque uno de los siguientes):
Igual
Mejor
Peor
¿Eres consciente de que los juzgados han instituido reformas, incluyendo los juicios orales y la presunción de
inocencia hasta que se pruebe lo contrario? Sí
No
Si respondiste que sí, por favor conteste las siguientes preguntas (marque "Sí" o "No"):
Sí
___
___
No
____
____
¿Crees que las reformas harán el juzgado más eficiente?
¿Crees que las reformas harán el juzgado más justo?
¿Eres consciente de que la policía federal ha instituido reformas, incluyendo cursos de profesionalización y más
recursos para luchar contra el crimen?
Sí
No
Si respondiste que sí, por favor conteste las siguientes preguntas (marque "Sí" o "No"):
Sí
___
___
No
____
____
¿Crees que las reformas harán la policía más eficiente?
¿Crees que las reformas harán la policía más justa?
El sábado a las tres de la tarde, un grupo de hombres armados roban un coche y tiran al conductor del coche al suelo.
Usted ha visto todo desde la ventana de su casa. ¿Qué haces usted primeramente?
____ Sales a ayudar al conductor del coche robado
____ Llamas a la policía
____ Llamas a un amigo y le dices lo que ha pasado
¿Has oído hablar de Iniciativa Merida?
Sí
No
129
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