Armin Rosen: There's One Huge Reason Mexico Is Becoming 'Less Free' Armin Rosen - Business Insider
go to original February 17, 2015

Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World survey was released this month, and found that 18 countries were on a downward trend compared to last year in terms of upholding political and civil liberties.

One of them is a crucial US ally responsible for about $US1.3 billion in daily trade and a recipient of $US194 million in security assistance: Mexico, which shares a 1,900-mile border with the US.

Mexico is a constitutional democracy and held a clean presidential election in 2012, won by Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Pena Nieto. But the US’s southern neighbour has been listed as “partly free” since 2011, thanks largely to the impact of the country’s drug war, which Nieto promised to scale back during his campaign.

Drug-trafficking organisations have frequently murdered journalists along with other critics and rivals in the areas they control. Meanwhile, the Mexican government has taken an at-times heavy-handed approach to fighting drug traffickers, while the country’s corrupt justice system and security services have proven incapable of handling high-profile suspects and targets.

But Freedom House decided that Mexico was on a downward trajectory for a very specific reason: The government’s complicity in the September 2014 abduction and murder of 43 teaching students from Iguala, in Mexico’s Guerrero state.

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