The murder of George Floyd by police on May 25, 2020 has been a painful demonstration of the deep-seated systemic racism in the United States. It has incited protests against police brutality across the United States and given significant momentum and national attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. It has also called criminal justice reform and defunding the police to the forefront of the political landscape in an effort to finally begin to remedy the system racism and injustice inherently part of America’s current justice system. Similar to the United States, Mexico also has long history of police brutality, torture, and abuse of power especially regarding minority indigenous populations. The Black Lives Matter movement has spread from the United States to many other nations including Mexico, and in light of a similar publicized police murder there are many parallels to be drawn between the two nations and their fight for racial justice within the criminal justice system. There are also a number of lessons that Mexico can learn from watching the Black Lives Matter movement unfold in the United States.
In early June of this year, protests broke out in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, Mexico following the murder of 30-year-old Giovanni Lopez while he was in police custody. Lopez had ben violently arrested on May 4, 2020. After being taken into custody he was taken from his cell for medical treatment and died several hours later as the result of a beating (Associated Press, 2020). Much like in the case of George Floyd and most acts of police violence in the United States none of the officers involved in this incident have been arrested or removed from the police force (Associated Press, 2020). This is common in Mexico as well where few extrajudicial killings by the criminal justice are investigated and justice brought to victims and their families. Much like how police killings in America are targeting at Black Americans, most police brutality incidents and murders in Mexico are towards indigenous populations, including an incident where 43 students went missing in 2014 after being taken into police custody (Carvalho, 2020). These are not just recent occurrences or anomalies, but there is a deep-seated history of police brutality and violence in Mexico that protestors want to see dismantled.
Since colonial times, Mexico and many other Latin American nations have had inquisitorial criminal justice institutions. This is a system in which the police are in charge of investigating crimes by using interrogation tactics to illicit confessions. As one Mexican police offer describes it, “we are taught to arrest to investigate, not to investigate to arrest.” While Mexico and many of these nations later switched to democratic forms of government following colonial rule, many did not ever make the transition to a more democratic police force (Magaloni & Rodriguez, 2020). Part of the reason for this is that the transition to democracy in Mexico and many Latin American states coincided with a sharp uptick in violence and crime, and the region still remains the most dangerous in the world today outside of warzones. This increase in insecurity created a need for a sense of a strong security force which not only prevented the police force from becoming a more democratic, judicial institution but allowed it to militarize to the extent it has today (Magaloni & Rodriguez, 2020). Though efforts have been made to abandon the inquisitorial justice system beginning in 2000, they have never fully been implemented which allows the police to rely on torture to extract confessions- which is clearly not a democratic criminal justice method nor practice for obtaining reliable crime-solving information (Magaloni & Rodriguez, 2020). A major crime reform bill in 2008 made great strides at ending the practice of torture and restructure the prosecutorial system and some progress has been made. However, high levels of brutality still persist in Mexico today and they exacerbate the inequality and injustice already felt by indigenous populations.
Given the structure and the manner in which the Mexican police force was established, its violence and brutality stem from a different place than that in the United States. The police force in America was established in part to control slaves and since then has worked to uphold Jim Crow laws and later segregation all of which perpetuated systemic racism against Black Americans. Mexico’s police force in a non-democratic institution that remains from older forms of government, and as such casts a broader net for misconduct and brutality (Felbab-Brown, 2020). While police brutality in Mexico highlights the inequality that indigenous populations already face, brutality is more widespread as it is inextricably woven into the carried over militarized structure of the police force and practices such as torture (Felbab-Brown, 2020). Even given this difference, the road to change can be similar for the two nations and their goal is similar: they need to use the present-day momentum from protest advocacy and turn that into political activism by electing officials with reform plans and pushing those who are currently in office to enact legislative change to dismantle the systems of oppression that current police systems and police brutality help to keep in place.
This brings in where Mexico can begin to learn from the United States in the process of reforming their police force and ending institutionalized practices of brutality. While activism is an important step in the right direction, action must continue from there. In the United States many police chiefs and associations have taken a stand against the officers that murdered George Floyd and other Black Americans and announced support for investigations into acts of police brutality (Felbab-Brown, 2020). Three former generals have also taken a stand against the violence and abuse of power initiated by President Trump in response to protest. Mexico can take similar steps- having those in power denounce and take accountability for the atrocious act committed by the institutions they are in charge of. They can help take the lead in reforming these systems from within to remove their racist foundations and move towards justice. This process also includes mayors, governors, and other state officials in charge of policing institutions to take a stand against racism and being working with policy and advocacy organizations to implement researched methods that prevent police brutality. Additionally, these officials also must commit to vigorously investigating officers who are charges with acts of brutality (Felbab-Brown, 2020). These are all steps that the United States has begun to take, though significant steps are still needed.
Activist and advocate action is also important, as advocates around the United States have turned out for protests and began calling and writing to representatives calling for systemic and legislative change. This can be called a “whirlwind” of activism, and the Black Lives Matter movement was poised to have one after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (Lakey, 2020). The movement called national attention in every state, with even small towns that are majority white and republican having demonstrations that called the attention of republican senators and congressman to take action (Lakey, 2020). Mexico is in a way at this point as well, with national attention to the issue of police brutality captured after the murder of Giovanni Lopez. Furthermore, the attention the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn in North American and across the globe gives the movement and the ideals behind it the legitimacy it needs to stand up to systems of oppression and create real change (Gooderidge, 2020). This legitimacy helps Mexico as it is the perfect time for them to start taking some of the actions that have begun taking off in the United States to dismantle their own systems that allow for police brutality and violence against vulnerable populations (Gooderidge, 2020).
Mexico has its own history of systemic violence and brutality within their police force. Vulnerable indigenous populations most often fall victim to these acts of violence. Following the international momentum the Black Lives Matter movement gained in the United States and the unrest within their country following the police murder of Giovanni Lopez, Mexico is perfectly positioned advocate for systemic change. They can, and should, use this international momentum to take some of the same steps that the United States has taken to dismantle the systems that allow for systemic police brutality to persist.
Works Cited:
- Anger Rising In Mexico Over Alleged Police Brutality Death. (2020, June 05). Retrieved from https://www.latinousa.org/2020/06/05/angerrisingmex/
- Carvalho, B. (2020, June 29). Latin America Is Ready for Its Black Lives Matter Reckoning. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/opinion/latin-america-racism-police.html
- Felbab-Brown, V. (2020, June 08). Hatred and police brutality in the U.S. and lessons for Mexico. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/06/08/hatred-and-police-brutality-in-the-u-s-and-lessons-for-mexico/
- Forné, C. S. (2016). The Excessive Use Of Force By Mexico City Law Enforcement Agencies: Corruption, Normal Abuse And Other Motives. Mexican Law Review, 9(1), 3-21. doi:10.1016/j.mexlaw.2016.09.001
- George Lakey. (2020, June 22). Today’s Progressive Movements must Learn from Black Lives Matter – and Join Together. Retrieved from https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-22/todays-progressive-movements-must-learn-from-black-lives-matter-and-join-together/
- Gooderidge, J. (2020, June 11). Now is the time to shine a light on police brutality in Mexico. Retrieved from https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/now-is-the-time-to-shine-a-light-on-police-brutality-in-mexico/
- Magaloni, B., & Rodriguez, L. (2020). Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico. American Political Science Review, 114(4), 1013-1034. doi:10.1017/s0003055420000520
- Medina, J. (2020, July 3). Latinos Back Black Lives Matter Protests. They Want Change for Themselves, Too. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/us/politics/latinos-police-racism-black-lives-matter.html
- McDonnell, P., & Linthicum, K. (2020, June 06). U.S. protests prompt reflections on class, race and police violence in Mexico. Retrieved October 06, 2020, from https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-06-06/us-protests-prompt-reflections-on-class-race-and-police-violence-in-mexico
- Mexico: Overhaul Police Forces. (2020, July 24). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/24/mexico-overhaul-police-forces
- Lima, E.C. (2020, June 22). Black Lives Matter is inspiring demonstrations all over Latin America. American Press Incz
