Mexico’s Transition: Can the Fox Administration Reform the Police?

Mexican President Vicente Fox's inauguration in December 2000 brought an end to seven decades of one-party authoritarian rule. The election was a culmination of profound political opening in the last fifteen years, during which many Mexicans found it easier to express their political choices, raise complaints about human rights abuses, and advocate change.

Voters in Mexico and observers abroad hoped the Fox era would finally signal an end to decades of abuse and neglect by authorities during which police, soldiers and other state agents were implicated in extra-judicial killings including massacres, forced-disappearances, torture and other mistreatment. Officials responsible or implicated were seldom investigated or prosecuted, let alone convicted or imprisoned.

Candidate Vicente Fox promised that human rights in Mexico would be protected and respected as never before. In office, Fox has taken some important steps such as admitting official responsibility in rights violations, overseeing a changed approach to international human rights bodies, and occasionally employing the unique power of the presidency to release those wrongfully imprisoned or to appoint a special prosecutor for past abuses.

Yet two years after assuming office, President Fox has not convinced Mexicans that he can reform the institutions that will ultimately be needed to buttress the credibility and indeed, legitimacy, of Mexican government. However, even Fox’s harshest critics do not pretend the past can be undone in a few years time. He cannot hope, and should not promise to complete the needed transformations from corrupt and inefficient courts and police forces in one term.

The legacy of one-party, unaccountable government has left even the most well-intentioned reformers at a great disadvantage. The justice sector, and especially police work, were so disdained in practice and immune to reform that most researchers shied away from this area, depriving Mexico of an indigenous base of expertise in public security. Mexico’s ultra-centralized federalism also precluded development of experimentation and exchanges among states and localities such as that fostered among police departments in the United States. Indeed, two decades of debate, experimentation, and development concerning policing and governance in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Latin America have never been assimilated in Mexico.

But that’s not all. Budget pressures in a sluggish economy have ensured that low salaries stay low. And house cleaning won’t be easy in the midst of heightened concerns over crime and criminals that appear to be better armed, better organized, and better financed than the police themselves - putting aside the difficulty that, in some instances, they may actually be allied with the police.

Fox and his team face a daunting task, but they need not be paralyzed by it. They can take important first steps by laying out a clear plan for identifying the priority problems, evaluating different approaches, and making the case for a long term investment of resources in institutional renewal. In doing so, the government will have to achieve some agreement across party lines, so that the next administration is politically obligated to pursue the long term strategy, rather indulging in the traditional habit of scrapping its predecessor’s blueprints.

In addition, Mexico must look without for ideas — learning from other transitional experiences, selecting from among other models and practices those that best suit its particular circumstances. Unless it can jumpstart its own development by learning from diverse experiences, for many Mexicans the transition will include a painful wait for talent to flow back into these neglected areas of governance. President Fox can demonstrate leadership by creating an autonomous commission, with legislative support, to make recommendations that can be translated into legislation, budget priorities and policies for an era of reform.

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