Communicative Interaction Between Mexico and Its International Critics Around the Issue of Military Jurisdiction: “Rhetorical Action” or “Truth Seeking Arguing”?

Abstract

During the government of Felipe Calderón (2006–2012), international advocates showed particular concern about the issue of military jurisdiction. They persistently argued that violations of human rights by members of the armed forces should be prosecuted through the civil system of penal justice. The government responded by developing a clear and coherent human-rights-oriented discourse. This article studies this process of communicative interaction, recurring to the notions of “rhetorical action” and “truth seeking arguing.” Which one of these two modes of communicative interaction dominated? And, what does this tell us about the reach of the socialization process around the issue of military jurisdiction in Mexico? The article concludes that “rhetorical action” was the dominant mode of communicative interaction, suggesting that the Calderón government developed human-rights-oriented arguments in order to advance its previously defined preferences and interest, and that therefore the socialization process was rather limited.

Notes

¹The first formal recommendations to Mexico by human rights organs and bodies of the United Nations related to military jurisdiction were issued in the mid-1990s. See the database “International Human Rights Recommendations to Mexico” (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos and Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores n.d.).

²Mexico's Code of Military Justice was eventually reformed in mid-June 2014, eliminating the system of military jurisdiction over cases of human rights violations presumably perpetrated by members of the armed forces against civilians. The reform was implemented 18 months after the end of the Calderón period and just as this article was being copyedited by the publisher. The adoption of this reform is clearly an important development in the process of communicative interaction between the Mexican government and its international critics. Its ultimate meaning, however, will have to wait to be assessed in detail elsewhere. The analysis developed in this article is limited to the Calderón period, so its main findings and arguments have not been affected by the adoption of the reform.

³Ultimately, a meaningful change in behavior will result from a change in the actor's identity. Risse notes that public debates about human rights are clearly identity related, as “[i]nternational human rights norms are increasingly understood as a constitutive property of what it means to be a modern and civilized state” (Risse 2000: 22).

⁴These special reports are highly important because they signal the issues or situations that cause greater concern for international NGOs. AI and HRW also issue other types of critical documents, such as open letters and press releases. However, the inclusion of a particular issue or situation in its annual reports and more so the elaboration of (lengthy) special reports provides sufficient evidence to gauge the overall intensity of the pressure exerted by each NGO over a given country and the concerns expressed thereof.

⁵This review was facilitated by the database “International Human Rights Recommendations to Mexico,” which registers and catalogs all the recommendations contained in every formal report about Mexico issued by the human rights organs and mechanisms of the UN and the OAS (see Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos and Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores n.d.).

⁶With information from the database “Recomendaciones Internacionales a México en Materia de Derechos Humanos” (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos and Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores n.d.)

⁷Maureen Meyer is Director of the Mexico Program at the Washington Office for Latin America.

⁸The theoretical framework developed in the initial section of this article makes reference to the discourse of governments and their critics. The key objective of this article, however, is to assess the government's discourse. In this sense, the analysis that follows focuses exclusively on the latter and not on the discursive approach followed by international advocates and critics.

⁹These press releases and speeches were obtained through guided searches in the Calderón government's database of press documents (calderon.presidencia.gob.mx). These searches were made in January and February 2012, using the database's search engine, particularly searching for documents that contain specific combinations of key terms. Press releases and public speeches from 2007 were not included because of a likely case of missing data (the overall number of documents from 2007 that are included in the database is by far smaller than those of subsequent years, which led us to suppose that not all the documents issued that year were uploaded).

¹⁰The IACHR held four thematic audiences about the issue of security and human rights in Mexico between October 2008 and October 2011 (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 2008, 2009, 2011a, and 2011b.)

¹¹The hearing on the Radilla case was held on July 7, 2009. The hearing on the Cabrera García and Montiel Flores vs. Mexico case was held on August 26 and 27, 2010. Audio files of the hearings were provided by Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and are on file with the author.

¹²The search of news reports by the Mexican press was conducted using the InfoLatina news archive (see http://site.securities.com/corp/advanced_search.html?pc = MX). The search focused on the Mexican newspaper La Jornada (known for its extensive coverage of human rights issues), using as points of reference the dates of the release of the rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

¹³This table is based on the results of two complementary search exercises in the Calderón government's archive of press documents. The first of them was made requesting the archive's search engine to find press releases that contained the terms “commitment” (compromiso) and “human rights” (derechos humanos). The search engine produced a list of 343 press releases. The text of all the documents was analyzed in order to verify that an actual link between the two key terms was explicitly made (the terms could have been used in different parts of the documents without being explicitly connected or related with each other). The second exercise was made requesting the search engine to find documents already classified within the “public security” (seguridad pública) theme and that, in addition, contained the key term “human rights” (derechos humanos). This search produced a total number of 277 documents. Again, the text of all the documents was analyzed in order to verify that, in fact, they contained claims about the respect to human rights in law enforcement activities.

¹⁴Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo is Deputy Secretary for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights of Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

¹⁵José Antonio Guevara is Former Head of the Human Rights Unit of Mexico's Ministry of Internal Affairs, former Minister responsible for human rights in the Permanent Mission of Mexico before the United Nations in Geneva, former Deputy Director General for Human Rights and Democracy of Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and former Deputy Ombudsman at the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District.

¹⁶Alan García is Coordinator of the Juridical and Analysis Unit of the Mexico City Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

¹⁷In 56 press releases, the government makes reference to these actors. These press releases were identified requesting the search engine to find the releases containing the terms “Amnesty International” (Amnistía Internacional), “Human Rights Watch,” “Human Rights Council” (Consejo de Derechos Humanos), “Human Rights Committee” (Comité de Derechos Humanos), “Special Rapporteur” (Relator Especial), “Commission on Human Rights” (Comisión de Derechos Humanos), and “Inter-American Court on Human Rights” (Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos).

¹⁸According to Ambassador Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo, this speech was a direct response to the harsh report published by HRW that same year (interview with Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo).

¹⁹Juan Carlos Gutiérrez is the former director of the leading Mexican NGO ‘Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights’ and former Head of the Human Rights Unit of Mexico's Ministry of Internal Affairs.

²⁰At the time of the interview, Rupert Knox was the Mexico Researcher for Amnesty International.

²¹Kristina Hardaga was the Coordinator of the International Relations Area of the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center.

²²The search of excitativas was made in the government's System of Legislative Information. See Secretaría de Gobernación (n.d.).

²³At the time of the interview, Daniel Joloy was the Coordinator of the International Relations Area at the Mexican Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights.

²⁴The violations of human rights by members of the armed forces in the struggle against drugs have not diminished (see Human Rights Watch 2013 and 2011a). In this sense, the US Department of State's 2012 Human Rights Country Report on Mexico stresses that “Significant human rights-related problems included police and military involvement in serious abuses, including unlawful killings, physical abuse, torture, and disappearances” (Department of State 2013).

²⁵This article focused in the Calderon government or administration—that is, the executive branch of government. The article paid only marginal attention to the Mexican Congress or the Supreme Court. Indeed, both Congress and the Supreme Court had a lot to do with the developments regarding military jurisdiction in Mexico—the former failing to undertake a serious and committed discussion on the issue and the latter actually adopting ground-breaking decisions towards the end of the period under study (see Anaya Muñoz 2013: 68–70). But the key Mexican actor in the processes of transnational interaction addressed here was the executive branch of government. It was the executive branch that was the direct target of international criticisms and key interlocutor of critics from abroad. In this sense, the behavior of the executive branch of government is the main interest of research like this, focused on the interaction between a government and its international critics. It is also true that the executive branch of government was not a unified actor in the Calderón period (or any other, for that matter), and that thus different groups held divergent views regarding the issue of military jurisdiction and the best way to react to international pressures and arguments (personal interview with Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo, September 11, 2012; personal interview with José Antonio Guevara, June 15, 2012). But for practical reasons, the analytical focus here was on the views and the behavior that ultimately prevailed within the Calderón administration.

²⁶As stressed in the disclaimer included in Note 2 above, Mexico's Code of Military Justice was finally reformed in mid-June 2014. This reform suggests an important change in the Mexican government's normative or causal beliefs regarding the issue at hand. In this sense, the reform suggests that the socialization process has had an important development under the new presidential administration, headed by President Enrique Peña Nieto (December 2012 to November 2018). As already underlined, however, the ultimate meaning of this will have to be assessed in depth elsewhere. Possible explanations in this respect are suggested in the final lines of this concluding section.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alejandro Anaya Muñoz

Alejandro Anaya Muñoz is Associate Professor of the International Studies Division, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas [CIDE]) and a member of Mexico's National System of Researchers. His publications on cultural diversity and human rights in Mexico include two books and articles in the Human Rights Quarterly, the Journal of Latin American Studies, the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, and the International Journal of Human Rights. His most recent publication is El país bajo presión. Debatiendo el papel del escrutinio internacional de derechos humanos sobre México [The Country Under Pressure: A Debate on the Role of international Human Rights Scrutiny Over Mexico] (Mexico City, CIDE, 2012).