Monday,
September 14, 2009
The Raging Storm over Mexico's New Attorney General
Frontera NorteSur
If Arturo Chavez Chavez is
confirmed as Mexico's new Attorney General, the lawyer from the state of Chihuahua will be in a pivotal role to influence,
steer and direct the binational, anti-drug Merida Initiative between the United States and Mexico, as well as an expanded
version with Canada and other nations, in the drug war.
As Mexico's chief law enforcement officer, Chavez will also
be in charge of federal prosecutions for human trafficking, women's murders, product piracy, and environmental crimes, among
others.
But President Felipe Calderon's nomination of Chavez, to replace Eduardo Medina-Mora, has stirred up a storm
of controversy.
Women's and human rights organizations, and members of opposition political parties, reject Chavez.
They accuse the controversial lawyer of covering up the mass murders of women and the disappearances of many men in Ciudad
Juarez, as well as helping to fabricate a scapegoat, the late Egyptian national Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, in the border femicides.
"This
is a bad piece of news," said Paula Flores, mother of 1998 Ciudad Juarez femicide victim Sagrario Gonzalez. "It could be more
of a political favor, because Chavez is a member of the PAN (National Action Party) and President Calderon is a member of
the PAN."
Mexican press accounts allege Chavez concealed from the public a series of 1996-97 armed robberies in Chihuahua
that could be linked to the PAN and a clandestine ultra-conservative organization, El Yunque, which promotes a Catholic theocracy
as the solution to Mexico's crisis.
Some opponents accuse Chavez of later having a hand in the 2006 repression against
anti-government protestors in the state of Oaxaca, when he held a key post in Mexico's Interior Ministry under the late Carlos
Abascal during the administration of Vicente Fox. Multiple Mexican media reports indentified Abascal as a member of El Yunque.
A
graduate of the Tec de Monterrey's Chihuahua branch, Chavez is associated with a Mexico City law firm that includes onetime
PAN presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos and current Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont.
Informed
about Chavez's nomination by a reporter, longtime women's rights activist Vicky Caraveo of Women for Juarez simply said, "Jesus,
I can't believe it."
From 1992 to 1998, Chavez variously served as the deputy state attorney general and then state
attorney general for Chihuahua, in addition to a stint as the delegate for the federal attorney general's office in the same
state.
In his different capacities, Chavez was among the first state law enforcement officials to oversee the investigations
of numerous sex-related slayings in Ciudad Juarez, as well as the kidnappings of men (and some women) said to have fallen
out with the dominant drug cartel. Both the women's and men's murder investigations were characterized by indifference, irregularities,
lost files and evidence, threats against victims' family members, and no credible prosecutions, in spite of credible leads.
In
1998, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued its Recommendation #44/98 that held Chavez and other Chihuahua
state officials responsible for bungling the femicide investigations. Later probes by the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and others reached similar conclusions.
In another matter, Chavez's
office was also found responsible by the official Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission for violating the human rights of
indigenous members of the Monterde Ejido who were brutally attacked by the Chihuahua state police while conducting an anti-logging
protest in 1997.
Although the CNDH recommended investigating and sanctioning Chavez and other responsible state officials
for dereliction of duty in the Ciudad Juarez cases, then Chihuahua Governor Francisco Barrio (PAN) criticized the report as
politically inspired and took no action.
Today, Barrio is Mexico's ambassador to Canada, and he will work with Chavez
again if the latter is confirmed by the Senate as the new attorney general.
Chavez's nomination almost single-handedly
revived the largely dormant anti-femicide movement in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. In Ciudad Juarez, mothers of femicide victims
organized a public protest last week, while in Chihuahua City, Women in Black and other groups staged a similar demonstration.
Scores of Mexican human rights and women's organizations have voiced opposition to the nomination. Relatives of femicide victims
and their supporters announced plans to travel to Mexico City, where Chavez could render testimony as part of his confirmation
process in the Senate on Tuesday, September 15.
In a letter to the president of the Mexican Senate's justice commission,
Marisela Ortiz, the head of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa, a femicide victims' relatives group based in Ciudad Juarez,
took sharp exception to the Chavez nomination. The appointment, Ortiz contended, would enshrine continued impunity in
human rights violations and represent an insult to national and international human rights mechanisms.
News of the
nomination quickly crossed the Atlantic, where the Green fraction of the European Parliament issued a statement requesting
that the Mexican Senate deny Chavez the attorney general's post. Spanish Green Raul Romeva, who authored the European Parliament's
1997 resolution against femicide in Mexico and Central America, said awarding the attorney general's post to Chavez would
constitute a negative signal about the "seriousness of the government of Mexico in combating impunity." Approving Chavez,
Romeva added, would put "the fox in charge of the hen house."
Until now, there has been no peep about the Chavez nomination
from the US Congress, which passed its own anti-femicide resolution in 2006 and just released $214 million in Merida Initiative
funds.
Chavez's nomination comes at politically-sensitive moments for Mexico. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights
is expected to render a judgment soon in a 2001 Ciudad Juarez femicide case that could result in a mandatory order for greater
federal involvement in clearing up the women's murders. The Mexican attorney general's office is also pursuing a controversial
murder case against a suspect in the slaying of US journalist Brad Will during the 2006 repression in Oaxaca. A US-based group
of Will supporters, Friends of Brad Will, regards the prosecution as another instance of cover-up and fabrication.
Reaction
to the Chavez nomination from the Mexican political class has been mixed. While making no public comments about his controversial
nomination so far, Chavez is staunchly defended by members of his own party. Chihuahua Senator Maria Teresa Ortuņo said Chavez
possessed all the right stuff for combating corruption and organized crime. Jose Gonzalez Morfin, general-secretary of the
PAN, defended Chavez's '90s stint as Chihuahua's top cop.
"I believe he was a good state attorney general, even in
an issue as complex and with such international impact as the murdered women of Juarez," Gonzalez said.
In the old
days of absolute presidential power, the Chavez nomination would have sailed through without further adieu. But the Senate,
which must ratify the nomination under Mexican law, is now dominated by opposition parties, especially the former ruling and
resurgent PRI. Mexican senators from the PRI,.PRD, PT, and Convergencia parties expressed a mixture of surprise, disgust and
wait-and-see.
Chavez, however, has supporters within the ranks of the PRI, such as Fernando Rodriguez Moreno, coordinator
of the PRI group in the Chihuahua state legislature, who called Chavez "good people." Despite the femicides and the Monterde
incident, there was no reason Chavez should not be approved, Rodriguez said.
A group of mothers from Ciudad Juarez
and Chihuahua will have a very different message to tell senators when they assemble in Mexico City on September 15, one day
before Mexico's national Independence Day holiday.
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Sources: La Jornada/Notimex,
September 8, 11 and 12, 2009. Norte, September 8, 9, 11, 12, 2009. Articles by Carlos Huerta, Jesus Batista, Manuel E. Aguirre,
Ricardo Espinoza, and editorial staff. Cimacnoticas.com, August 18 and September 9, 2009. Articles by Lourdes Godinez Leal.
El Diario de Juarez, September 8, 2009. Lapolaka.com, September 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 2009. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, September 9,
2009. Article by Efrain Klerigan and Erika Hernandez. Proceso/Apro, September 8, 2009. Article by Jesusa Cervantes. El Universal, September 8, 2009. Articles by Liliana Alcantra,
Maria de la Luz Gonzalez and Ricardo Gomez. Terra.com/EFE, April 11, 2004.
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Reprinted with authorization
from Frontera NorteSur, a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source; translation FNS
