The failure of Mexico\u2019s former federal Attorney General\u2019s Office (Procuradur\u00eda General de la Rep\u00fablica, PGR) to successfully prosecute corruption cases, grave human rights violations, and other high-impact crimes played a lead role in generating the widespread violence and insecurity that plagues Mexico today. In the face of generalized impunity, Mexican and international human rights groups, anti-corruption experts, and criminal justice reformers have led a historic push in recent years to reduce political meddling in sensitive criminal investigations.<\/p>\n
In February 2014, Mexico\u2019s Congress passed a constitutional reform mandating the transformation of the PGR into an independent, autonomous National Prosecutor\u2019s Office (Fiscal\u00eda General de la Rep\u00fablica, FGR), separate from the executive branch. After years of delay in passing the constitutional and legislative reforms needed to formally create the FGR, Alejandro Gertz Manero took office as Mexico\u2019s first autonomous national prosecutor in January 2019.<\/p>\n
While the creation of the FGR sparked hope for a new era in Mexico\u2014in which politicians and security forces are held responsible for their misdeeds and citizens have trust in the criminal justice system\u2014 the new institution has yet to realize its potential. National Prosecutor Gertz has failed to fulfill several essential aspects of his mandate, including by illegally appointing special prosecutors, closing off spaces for citizen participation, and announcing reform efforts that are inherently incompatible with the spirit of the FGR and Mexico\u2019s broader adversarial criminal justice system.<\/p>\n
In this report, we discuss the importance of this transition and analyze the FGR\u2019s performance in the first year and a half of Gertz\u2019s nine-year term. We also examine how the FGR has operated during COVID-19, as Gertz\u2019s response to the pandemic has been criticized for not implementing proper safeguards for employees and for using the pandemic as a pretext for stalling the FGR\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
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The failure of Mexico\u2019s former federal Attorney General\u2019s Office (Procuradur\u00eda General de la Rep\u00fablica, PGR) to successfully prosecute corruption cases, grave human rights violations, and other high-impact crimes played a lead role in generating the widespread violence and insecurity that plagues Mexico today. In the face of generalized impunity, Mexican and international human rights groups, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":21209,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[530],"tags":[],"country":[887,884],"issue":[856],"program":[872],"resource":[851],"class_list":["post-21208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publicaciones","country-mexico","country-america-del-norte","issue-public-prosecution-offices","program-judicial-independence","resource-reports"],"acf":{"boton_1":"Read the report\u00a0here","url_boton_1\u00ba":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/where_does_mexico_stand_in_its_fight_against_impunity.pdf","boton_2":"","url_boton_2":"","boton_3":"","url_boton_3":"","boton_4":"","url_boton_4":"","boton_5":"","url_boton_5":"","boton_6":"","url_boton_6":"","boton_7":"","url_boton_7":"","boton_8":"","url_boton_8":"","boton_9":"","url_boton_9":"","boton_10":"","url_boton_10":""},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/publicaciones-110.jpg?fit=343%2C514&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21212,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21208\/revisions\/21212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21208"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=21208"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=21208"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=21208"},{"taxonomy":"resource","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dplf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource?post=21208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}