Popular Consultation and Transitional Justice
Diego Martin Velázquez Caballero
Although the results of the survey regarding the trial of former Mexican presidents did not have the necessary results for the binding establishment that Morena's supporters - and some victims of authoritarian periods - considered, it is important to reflect on the demand for justice and memory of the past that a part of society claims.
At the end of the last century, the historical trial was considered as a point of debate in the theory of transitions to democracy, legally it was called "Transitional Justice" to the legal processes necessary to judge the representatives of the authoritarian regime and jump to the period necessary for democratic consolidation. This process did not imply summary trials but rather the legal conscience, even in the absence, of the authoritarian perpetrators.
The promoters of the agreed transition generated a current of opinion different from the historical judgment that indicated the need for oblivion. For example, Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, Ignacio Morales Lechuga and Carlos Castillo Peraza; They believed that it was necessary to forgive and forget, to make end-of-term laws and amnesty, as happened in the cases of Spain and Chile, as well as in some regions of Eastern Europe. Even in aspects such as the "Dirty War" there was an emphasis on healthy forgetfulness.
The Vicente Fox presidency did not apply any sanction against the authoritarian regime, the legal commissions to track down perpetrators and disappeared were obsolete. For some, this situation was necessary to generate governability and for the first alternation presidency to have no setbacks. Some of the data that had been provided by Francisco Barrios were simply not taken into account.
The left and right were complicit in forgetfulness, their supine demands for historical reparation were overcome by the violence unleashed in subsequent governments. The war against drug trafficking involved a struggle whose human cost has not had time to consider.
The results of the survey show that there will be no transitional justice for Mexico, AMLO's disinterest as well as the commitments to the dirty war that there are in certain 4Q collaborators, are a sign that only history can pay attention to this issue, although Some seem like a memorandum of rancor, it is still the only sign of the responsibility that various actors of the political class have with authoritarianism and corruption in Mexico.
Transitional justice makes it possible to delimit human actions, recognize mistakes and amend acts. It is Vivianne Forrester's criticism of Hanna Arendt when she points out that authoritarianisms do not have an artificial evil.
The impossibility of historical or transitional justice and its relationship with US imperialism and the Catholic Church have not been evaluated. The drug trafficking-cia-anticomunismo-dfs square may affect the interests of imperialist governance and the concessions that North America has made to the Mexican political class.
The geopolitics of the cold war is responsible for the many authoritarian acts that still have resonance and explain much of the socioeconomic structure of Mexico.
AMLO, like Vicente Fox, can do little about the past, there are many issues that US interventionism hinders. Thomas Jefferson noted: "I truly tremble for my country when I think that God exists." North American messianism has no fear of God or anything. Manifest destiny is capable of transforming murderers into heroes just because, yes, it is the reward for building capitalism.
Memory or Forgetfulness? That is the dilemma. Who has the right to remember? Who has the right to justice? More than legal questions, they seem eschatological questions. Nicaragua and Cuba have demonstrated in international tribunals the barbaric acts that the United States has committed. Who can punish the Empire?
The results of the popular poll and the disinterest -political and social- indicate the prevalence of corruption and impunity that anti-communism made customary. The final point laws are a sample of containing the transformation of law and justice, making stone what by nature has to be dynamic and transformative.
The past will still be there, it can no longer be hidden, the question is to assimilate and learn from it. Resolve trauma as in psychological therapy. Denying it implies lying and upsetting the future of society, repeating problems and evil. The link in the history of corruption, abuse and impunity with the learning of democratic political culture is more than important.
