In 1999 Global Exchange is working with Mexican and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and policy-makers to organize, plan, coordinate, and jointly run an ongoing series of educational campaigns and national and international actions on the questions of militarization, repression and impunity in Mexico. The focus of our work this year is on challenging the unwritten codes of impunity for human rights violators and torturers supported by the ruling party, and the public rationale for widespread army deployment in Mexico.

In the last four years, the Mexican army and para-military forces have begun to play a new and dangerous role in Mexico. Growing violence and human rights abuses on the part of army and local security forces have caused Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Americas to conclude that Mexico has become one of the worst human rights abusers in the hemisphere. The horrifying year end massacre in Acteal, Chiapas was given the go-ahead by local PRI leaders and is symptomatic of deep distress and genuine danger that Mexico faces as it struggles for democracy.

At the same time, last year's July mid-term elections--which deprived the ruling PRI of its congressional majority for the first time in history--have provided Mexico's civil society with important tools with which to challenge the corrupt institutions that have dominated Mexican society for seven decades. The fragile democratic advances that have been achieved need continuing support to carry through on the promise of change in the face of continued armed uprisings and the extreme structural poverty that underlie them.

Since 1994, large areas of Mexico's majority indigenous southern states (especially Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero) have come under military rule. The army remains out of its barracks and--for the first time in decades--its influence is growing in the country's civilian life. The majority of Mexico's 32 states now have federal military participation in their civilian police command structures. In some areas, soldiers even participate in administrating public assistance and literacy programs. Rebel insurgencies, urban crime, and growing drug trafficking have been used to justify warrantless police and army sweeps and arrests in urban and rural areas. In 1997, politically motivated jailings, disappearances, and unsolved political murders have continued and there has been widespread judicial impunity for human rights abusers, many of whom are ruling party supporters or members of pro-government para-military organizations.

Despite tragedies that overshadowed them, the July 1997 elections need to be recognized as a watershed event in the evolution of Mexican democracy. Years of civic struggle and sacrifice have born fruit in national elections that, for the first time, took place under independent electoral authorities, with equitable government funding of all registered parties and unprecedented opposition access to mass media. The result is a new opposition majority in the lower house of congress and the victory of former opposition presidential candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas as Mexico City's "Chief of Government." Further opposition gains in the year 2000 seem possible and, despite widespread poverty, civic participation is at an all-time high.

Human rights and civic organizations, while still dealing with ongoing abuses and a huge backlog of unresolved cases, are building strong alliances with each other to analyze and challenge the structures and institutions that permit and encourage human rights violations. This analysis puts the spotlight on corrupt judicial institutions, rule by local cacique (rulers) and drug lords in rural zones, the growth of para-military organizations, unaccountable police and security forces, and the army command and its allies in the US military, congress, and administration. An effective challenge to these institutions presents a strategically complex, exceedingly difficult, and potentially dangerous task.