book highlights Mexican killings in drug war

Mexico City (AFP) – Innocent civilians have been murdered in the name of Mexico’s war on drug cartels by soldiers eager for results, a new book claims. The book claims the killings amount to war crimes.

Published on: 07/09/2024 – 03:33Altered: 07/09/2024 – 03:32

2 minutes

The two journalists and a human rights specialist behind Permission to Kill investigated more than 1,800 killings under three presidents since 2006, including outgoing leftist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The aim was to demonstrate the “systematic” nature of the killings, which likely involved members of the security forces, said co-author Daniel Moreno, director of the news site Animal Politico.

“It’s not a collection of anecdotes,” he told AFP.

“These three governments are continuously attacking civilians and allowing the attackers to act with impunity,” Moreno said.

Researchers identified 494 such alleged crimes — mostly murders and forced disappearances — during Felipe Calderon’s presidency from 2006 to 2012, 808 under his successor Enrique Pena Nieto (2012-2018) and 489 during Lopez Obrador’s first four years in office.

But that’s not all, they say.

The Defense Ministry, which oversees the military, did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on the allegations.

'Permiso Para Matar' ('Permission to Kill'), an investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings by Mexican security forces, is on sale in a Mexico City bookstore — ‘Permiso Para Matar’ (‘Permission to Kill’), an investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings by Mexican security forces, is on sale in a Mexico City bookstore © ALFREDO ESTRELLA / AFP

According to official figures, more than 450,000 Mexicans have been killed and tens of thousands have disappeared since Calderon deployed the army against drug cartels in 2006.

Under a policy he calls “hugs, not bullets,” Lopez Obrador pledged to prioritize tackling the root causes of crime, such as poverty and inequality, rather than going to war with the cartels.

During his presidency, “there was less use of violence and more respect for life,” Lopez Obrador said Sunday in his latest state of the nation report before he is replaced on Oct. 1 by his ally Claudia Sheinbaum.

Parallels with Colombia

Co-author Paris Martinez sees similarities with the more than 6,000 killings and disappearances that researchers say were committed by the Colombian military between 2002 and 2008 to make the fight against guerrilla groups appear more effective.

The book, also written by human rights expert Jacobo Dayan, argues that there have been repeated failures to investigate or punish those responsible, some of whom are still active or have been promoted.

“They arrested the people who fired the shots, not the ones who devised the strategy,” Moreno said.

According to the authors, of the more than 1,800 cases investigated, only 133 resulted in a conviction.

Human rights organization Amnesty International said in a report published in April that Mexican forces last year “continued to use unnecessary and excessive force and carried out extrajudicial killings.”

“Impunity for these crimes and human rights violations continues,” the report said, citing the case of five men allegedly killed by soldiers in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo in February 2023.

The book’s authors will hand over their work to the local office of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which investigates war crimes and crimes against humanity, Martinez said.