Mexico Human Rights Commission: Need to Clean the Garbage Dump Sergio Aguayo and Maura Roldan Alvarez - Reforma
go to original October 24, 2014

States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering by Stanley Cohen Check it out on Amazon.com

Forced disappearance is atrocious; state incompetence is scandalous; and international skepticism about the modernity of Mexico is natural. In selecting the new president of the CNDH [National Human Rights Commission], the Senate has an extraordinary opportunity to start cleaning up the garbage dump.

Margarita Santizo successfully modeled El Cid who, according to legend, won battles after his death. Mrs. Santizo had been looking for her son, Esteban Morales Santizo, a federal police officer who went missing in Michoacán, since 2009. Before dying, she asked for her wake to be held in front of the Secretariat of Government Relations building in Bucareli; she wanted to say goodbye while rebuking the federal government that ignored her case. The same skepticism and rejection of formal institutions is seen among the relatives of the 43 missing students in Iguala; they don’t trust the government and demand that the analyses of the remains be done by the group of Argentine medical examiners.

In his book, States of Denial, Stanley Cohen described in detail how political leaders shirk their responsibility for human rights violations. For Cohen there are three major forms of denial: literal (nothing happened), interpretive (what happened is different from what they say), and justificatory (what happened was necessary or inevitable). It is a humanly universal practice, because nobody likes bad news, and it is uncommon for someone powerful to humbly admit his errors or omissions. In Mexico denying horror has reached such grotesque levels that doing so only causes contempt.

For years, Felipe Calderón hid the lists of disappeared persons collected by his Attorney General's Office. Just before his departure, we learned from a leak to the press that the count was over 26,000. Enrique Peña Nieto’s government has also done everything possible to minimize the humanitarian tragedy in various ways. Attention to the victims has been reduced to periodic speeches that have nothing to do with everyday life.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Thomas Mosley

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx.

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