Translated by Amanda Coe
One of the most notorious aspects of authoritarian regimes is the seditious use of the law to repress, censor and control the population. The content in the two new laws pushed by Enrique Peña Nieto and the parties of the Pact for Mexico confirms that the current resident of Los Pinos [The Pines] seeks to definitively consolidate the repressive policy that he tested in Atenco [where police of the State of Mexico violently suppressed demonstrations] on May 4, 2006, while serving as governor of the State of Mexico, and that he has repeated time and again since swearing in as president on December 1, 2012 [day of Peña Nieto´s inauguration, when police arrested people arbitrarily].
Peña Nieto realizes the increasing social anger toward his failed “structural reforms,” the economic crisis, rampant corruption, and widespread violence across the country. The Mexican president has also come under increasing pressure from international organizations to curb the expansive wave of human rights violations such as the constant attacks on journalists and social and political activists.
But instead of changing direction and resolving the root problem by attacking the criminal impunity taking hold of government institutions, Peña Nieto has decided to sponsor new laws that would legalize the generalized human rights crisis. In addition to the repressive “structural” counter-reforms that institutionalized corruption and looting, the new repressive counter-reforms seek to legalize the imposition of a state of siege throughout the country.
In the Chamber of Deputies, a draft the Regulatory Law to Article 29 of the Constitution was passed in committee that would give the President and Congress leeway to suspend our constitutional rights in the face of almost any “public peace disturbance” in order to establish “normalcy” of widespread impunity in the country. According to the text in the initiative, already approved by the Senate, the concept of “serious disturbance” is defined as a “violent social phenomenon that threatens the stability or security of the State or its social, political or economic structure.”
In other words, almost any social protest or perceived threat to authorities orchestrated by agitators on the payroll of Secretariat of Government Relations may be reason to cancel our most basic rights to freedom of assembly, protest and expression, as well as to privacy, information, transit and communication. Meaning that when Peña Nieto and his allied parties begin to feel that their power is unstable, the new law would allow them to lock all of us in our homes and cancel phone or internet service. At the same time, the government could establish a regime of strict censorship on all media, which is already largely in effect, and prohibit protest meetings and tap each and every one of our personal communications.
The new Atenco Law, passed by the PRI, PAN and PRD in Congress in the State of Mexico on March 17, serves as the perfect complement to the authoritarian law of the state of siege sponsored in federal Congress. The new Regulatory Law on the Use of Public Forces in the State of Mexico indiscriminately authorizes the use of public force in almost any situation of social protest. For example, Article 7 encourages its use in ensuring “order and public peace,” defined in the most abstract terms, as well as “in states of emergency, when used to safeguard one's own or another's legal right from real danger, whether current or imminent.” In addition, Chapter 3 of the Law generally authorizes use force for “crowd control” and defines de facto as an “illegal gathering” any citizen protest where they seek to “force” authorities to resolve an issue in a specific manner.
In short, the “Atenco Law” is designed to end social protest and protect security forces in the event of any accusations against them from the citizens who are victims of their repressive acts. The content in both laws, in Article 29 at the federal level and in the Use of Public Force at the state level, show the increasingly extreme isolation of the political class from society and its need to strictly govern through force.
And when we consider what Colombian Andrés Sepúlveda recently confessed to the Bloomberg agency about his participation in a wide spy network and electoral fraud during Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign in 2012, it is clear that the logic of force has been characteristic of the current government since its inauguration. Not only is Peña Nieto's administration not democratic, but, following each new revelation about the ins and outs of operating its international network of political corruption, it also is increasingly clear that it lacks the slightest social or institutional legitimacy.
Every day we will have more political prisoners behind bars and criminals in government if we do not come together, as a united society, with a clear political and electoral purpose, to stop the legalization of fraud and suspension of all of our rights as citizens. Spanish Original
*John M. Ackerman, U.S. born and trained scholar (Ph.D. in Political Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz), is also a Mexican citizen. He is a researcher in the Institute of Judicial Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Editorial Director of the Mexican Law Review. A columnist for La Jornada newspaper and Proceso magazine, Dr. Ackerman maintains a blog of his articles in Spanish, as well as some in English. Twitter: @JohnMAckerman