HomeNewsBriefCalderon Blocks Mexico Victims Law
BRIEF

Calderon Blocks Mexico Victims Law

MEXICO / 19 JUL 2012 BY HANNAH STONE EN

President Felipe Calderon has held up the passage of a law to compensate victims of violence in Mexico, drawing outrage from campaign groups that backed the move.

In April, Mexico's Congress passed a law to oblige the government to protect and offer compensation to those who have been victims of violence or abuse from organized criminal groups. The measure still needed the approval of the president, however, and on Wednesday he sent it back to Congress, seeking modifications.

Alfonso Fernandez Aceves, a representative of the Interior Ministry, said in a press conference that the president had not vetoed the legislation, but had asked Congress to fix "gaps," reported Milenio. The government wants municipal and state governments to be constitutionally obliged to help victims, according to Fernandez. He said that this was to make sure that there was no way for the authorities to evade their responsibilities, and that it would be clear who victims should turn to. He said that the government would work with victims' organizations and legislators and officials to improve the bill.

The government is also proposing that compensation for victims be paid by the criminals, and not by the "taxpayer." If the criminal in a given case lacks the money needed to pay compensation to the victim, the government will pay, but will then charge the criminal.

InSight Crime Analysis

The president's foot-dragging over the law has angered the Movement for Peace, a campaign group which was the driving force behind the proposal. It argues that the 30-day period in which the president can make comments or suggestions on the law expired on June 9, and that he delayed sending it back to Congress in order not to hurt his PAN party's chances in the national elections, held Sunday.

The organization's leader Javier Sicilia, a poet who emerged as representative of victims after his son was killed by a drug gang, accused the president of breaking his word. (Image, above, shows him with Calderon in a meeting last year.)

While it is certainly plausible that electoral considerations came into play with the timing of the move, it is also possible that that president has a point. The law is likely to work out to be extremely expensive for Mexico, with the maximum amount of compensation set at 934,000 pesos ($70,000) per claim, and some 50,000 people thought to have died in organized crime-related violence in the last six years, with many thousands more victimized in other ways.

It could therefore be a good idea to use funds seized from criminals to help fund compensation pay-outs, although given the difficulties of confiscating assets under current Mexican law, this may not be realistic and could even serve as a further roadblock to victims receiving help.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Tags

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

JALISCO CARTEL / 3 MAY 2023

New sanctions in a Puerto Vallarta timeshare fraud scam show how the CJNG exploits unsuspecting tourists as an alternate source…

CHAPITOS / 9 MAY 2023

The difficulty of sourcing finished fentanyl from China has Mexican groups acquire precursor chemicals to synthesize fentanyl themselves.

COCAINE / 15 MAR 2023

Australia and New Zealand are the most expensive cocaine markets in the world. For the Sinaloa Cartel, it's worth the…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…