Broken Justice in Mexico's Guerrero State

By Open Society Foundations

On September 26, 2014, dozens of student activists from a teachers’ college were detained and loaded into police vehicles by armed men in the town of Iguala, in Mexico’s Guerrero state. None of the students—43 in all—have been seen since. The disappearances of the 43, blamed on corrupt collusion between local politicians, drug gangs, and police, galvanized protests across Mexico, fueled by frustration over the lack of justice. The atrocity became a symbol of Mexico’s wider failure to protect its citizens from killings and disappearances, and to hold accountable those responsible. Broken Justice in Mexico’s Guerrero State examines the elements of that failure, and offers recommendations for change. The result of over two years of research and analysis by Mexican and international experts, and coproduced with Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan and the Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez, this report provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the structural deficiencies of Guerrero’s justice system—flaws that have enabled perpetrators of violence to operate with almost absolute impunity.

Broken Justice in Mexico’s Guerrero State exposes the profound lack of political will to address abuses, including the failure to prosecute state actors implicated in extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances. It also sets out an agenda for reform—the first steps needed to rebuild trust in justice and the rule of law in Guerrero.

New York: Open Society Foundations, 2015. 89p.