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Amnesty for drug traffickers? That’s one Mexican presidential candidate’s pitch to voters

Amnesty for drug traffickers? That’s one Mexican presidential candidate’s pitch to voters

With over 29,000 murders, 2017 was the deadliest year in Mexico since modern record-keeping began. Nearly two-thirds of Mexicans say crime and violence are the biggest problems facing their country.

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A main cause of the bloodshed, , is the Mexican government’s violent crackdown on drug trafficking. under President Felipe Calderón, this military assault on cartels has left in 11 years.

While numerous drug kingpins have been jailed, cartels , competing for territory and diversifying their business. Kidnapping and extortion have surged. Mexico is now .

Now one presidential candidate in Mexico is hoping to win over voters with a novel response to the country’s security crisis: .

Justice not revenge

The idea, first floated by leftist front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador in , is undeveloped and quite likely quixotic. López Obrador has yet to even indicate precisely what benefit the Mexican government would get in exchange for pardoning felons.

Still, as a who studies drug policy, I must give López Obrador some credit for originality. His three competitors have mostly this campaign season by suggesting the same .

López Obrador, founder and leader of Mexico’s MORENA Party, is a who delights in challenging the status quo. In this, his third presidential bid, he has on several occasions that and corrupt politicians could be pardoned for their crimes.

When pressed for details on the amnesty plan, López Obrador has simply responded that “amnesty is not impunity” or that Mexico needs “justice,” not “revenge.”

Former Supreme Court Justice Olga Sánchez Cordero, López Obrador’s pick for secretary of the interior, has offered a few additional hints about the plan. She not as a security policy but as a kind of transitional justice. It would be an instrument used to pacify Mexico.

The opportunity would be time-limited. Criminals would lose their immunity after a specific date if they have not met certain conditions – though these conditions remain undefined. It would also exclude serious crimes such as torture, rape or homicide.

All presidential pardons would need to be approved by Congress, in accordance with the .

Amnesty in Colombia

Sound vague? That’s because it is.

López Obrador says that his amnesty idea is still in development, and with religious organizations, Pope Francis, United Nations General Secretary António Guterres, Mexican civil society groups and human rights experts to develop “a plan to achieve peace for the country, with justice and dignity.”

Colombia offers one example of how amnesty can be used .

In 2016 the Colombian government signed an accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, ending the Marxist group’s violent 52-year rebellion. In exchange for laying down their weapons, from prosecution for political crimes committed during the conflict.

The amnesty law is extremely controversial. Colombian conservatives and the United Nations alike have it for prioritizing the rights of guerrillas over those of their victims. Colombia’s peace process has also been fraught by delays, and .

Still, according to the , a think tank, conflict-related deaths among both civilians and combatants in 2016.

Would amnesty work in Mexico?

Mexico is not Colombia.

López Obrador is proposing amnesty in a different conflict carried out by radically different actors – drug kingpins, corrupt politicians and security forces who for 11 years have waged war with .

It’s unclear, for example, why drug traffickers would abandon their illicit industry – which supports around in Mexico – in exchange for a preemptive pardon from authorities.

It is also difficult to reconcile López Obrador’s vows for with his proposal to pardon corruption, though he finishing all accused of corruption.

 

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who goes by his initials, AMLO, has not elaborated on his amnesty idea. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

 

López Obrador claims to seek a new “” for Mexico. He maintains that forgiveness is necessary to construct a “república amorosa” – “” – in which Mexicans “live under the principle that being good is the only way to be joyful.”

A simple expectation

Mexicans don’t feel joyful right now.

According to a , 89 percent of Mexicans believe the country is on the wrong track. Almost 70 percent disapprove of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s .

Journalist and historian Héctor Aguilar Camín has voters’ current mood as “melancholic.” , and have made them skeptical of politics. But, as Aguilar Camín says, people also need desperately to believe that change is possible.

This discontent has given López Obrador in the lead-up to the July election.

To paraphrase the prominent Mexican-American Univision reporter Jorge Ramos, all Mexicans want from their next president is . So they’re open to unusual ideas.

During , the only candidate other than López Obrador to propose a is Governor Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez, an independent from Nuevo Leon state. He promised “to cut off the hands” of corrupt politicians and criminals, a suggestion that left moderator – and – aghast.

The prohibits punishment with mutilation and torture.

 

Mexico held its first presidential debate on April 23, 2018. Independent Margarita Zavala, far left, dropped out of the race in mid-May.

 

Electoral advantages of ambiguity

Only López Obrador, with his amnesty suggestion, has questioned whether aggressive law enforcement should even be the core tenet of Mexican security policy.

His competitors have the idea, calling it “madness” and “nonsense.” Some accused López Obrador of being “a puppet of criminals.”

Alfonso Durazo, whom López Obrador’s would nominate to be Mexico’s secretary of security, that an amnesty law could end the “cycle of war” in Mexico by setting in motion a process of national reconciliation.

Meanwhile, to actively combat crime, López Obrador says he would the police and the military into one unified under .

The ConversationMaybe forgiveness and justice is what Mexico needs. But, for now, presidential pardons seem like little more than a hollow campaign promise. As Mexican pundit Denise Dresser has , López Obrador’s amnesty plan is merely “a blank page on the table, with multiple scriveners working on it.”

, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory,

This article was originally published on . Read the .

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