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TITLE:  MEXICO HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1995



Section 2  Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

     a.  Freedom of Speech and Press

The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and the press.
Since 1990, reforms and internal changes have made the media
more professional, freer of the Government and more
competitive.  The Government relinquished its control over
newsprint, banned the practice of overtly paying for favorable
news coverage, and ceased to pay for journalists' travel
expenses during trips.

There remained significant restrictions on these freedoms.  The
Government used its control of a significant advertising
budget, and its ability to reward favored journalists by
providing them access to officials, to discourage unfavorable
reports.  There continued to be some self-censorship by the
media.  The Government controls broadcast license renewals, and
some have charged that the Government delayed renewing licenses
for stations that are critical of the Government or the PRI.
On at least four occasions, radio station owners preempted any
possible problems with license renewals by firing employees who
had broadcast critical stories.  Journalists are also reluctant
to undermine their access to government officials by
criticizing them too freely.  Many media outlets depend heavily
on government advertising and do not wish to prejudice such
income.

The media have also changed internally.  Some new daily
newspapers and magazines are demanding higher education levels
from their reporters and paying them accordingly.  Some print
media are also implementing strict accounting procedures,
making the acceptance of bribes more difficult.  The electronic
media are lagging behind their print competitors in the
emphasis on training.

To a surprising degree, both print and electronic media
provided full coverage of the Chiapas uprising.  For example, a
cable television network broadcast a lengthy interview of EZLN
leader Subcomandante Marcos.  A provincial radio station
broadcast the peace talks between the EZLN and the government
team live, despite government admonitions that it not do so.
The EZLN also sought to control coverage of the talks, and
barred two television networks--one Mexican and one
American--from its press conferences, claiming the networks
were biased in favor of the Government.

The August election gave journalists an opportunity to
demonstrate independence.  Although only approximately
10 percent of the population regularly reads a newspaper (or
perhaps because of this) the move away from the traditional
pro-PRI party line was more notable in the print media.
Several independent studies found that the two primary
opposition candidates for president received substantially more
coverage during the 1994 campaign than during any other
previous election.  Still, the amount of coverage of the ruling
party candidate greatly exceeded that of the opposition, and
its tone was more favorable.  Studies of radio and television
election coverage, which was justly criticized in the past as
inequitable, found that electronic media coverage of the
opposition also increased this year, although less dramatically
than that of the print media.  The coverage afforded the ruling
party candidate was generally favorable; coverage of the
opposition was far more negative.

On election day, the main cable television company (controlled
by Televisa, the country's largest broadcaster and consistently
accused of progovernment bias) blacked out foreign programming
until all polling places were closed.  The electronic media
made some efforts to balance coverage.  For example, Televisa
gave equal amounts of free air and production time to all the
presidential candidates near the end of the campaign period.

Violence against journalists continued.  Assailants killed
three reporters in the state of Morelos; all were severe
critics of the departing state administration at the time of
their deaths.  Government authorities are investigating these
cases, and the CNDH is also pursuing one.  In 1990 the CNDH
initiated a limited program to investigate complaints of human
rights abuses by government officials against journalists; in
1994 the CNDH made it permanent.  The program, consisting of
three phases to date, involved a total of 100 cases through
September 28.  The complaints involved abuses that ranged from
unlawful termination of employment to murder.  The CNDH
concluded all but four cases in the three phases of the program
(many on administrative grounds).  It resolved 9 cases to the
satisfaction of the affected journalist; 21 others resulted in
punishment of government officials for illegal acts, and the
CNDH recommended that the Government take further action
against the accused official in 16 cases.  The CNDH
discontinued 25 cases because victims did not pursue their
allegations.

There continued to be incidents of outright intimidation.  For
example, armed intruders invaded and ransacked the offices of
the Roman Catholic Diocese in Ciudad Juarez in August.  Because
they took only a small amount of cash but left other valuables,
it did not appear that the motive was robbery.  The event
followed a meeting at which the Bishop had pressured the
Attorney General to pursue the case of murdered Archbishop
Posadas more rigorously.

In late January, the curator of a Matamoros museum gave
organizers of a photographic display portraying the conflict in
Chiapas 1 hour's notice to remove the display after the
commander of the Plaza Guard in Matamoros, Brig. Gen. Gonzalez
Garcia Silva, intimated his displeasure at the exhibit.  The
curator claimed that the expulsion was necessary in order to
conduct a previously scheduled fumigation, but the short notice
and the coincidence with the General's visit indicate otherwise.

     b.  Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

Citizens have a constitutional right to assembly and
association which they freely and frequently exercise.  The
only requirement for holding demonstrations is that groups
wishing to meet in public areas must inform local police
authorities.

     c.  Freedom of Religion

The Constitution provides for the right to practice the
religion of one's choice, and the authorities generally
respected this right.  (However, see Section 5 concerning
religious discrimination.)  Mexican law bars clergy from
holding public office and from advocating partisan political
positions.

     d.  Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign
         Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation

The Government does not generally restrict movement into, out
of, or within the country.  However, military checkpoints
remained in place throughout the year in areas around EZLN
strongholds (see Section 1.g.).  At the beginning of the year,
the military at these checkpoints sometimes harassed volunteers
with relief caravans carrying food and medicine to EZLN-held
territory; the situation later improved somewhat.  Similarly,
the military delayed several U.S. citizens working with human
rights groups at the checkpoints.

The Government admitted 45,000 Guatemalan refugees fleeing from
the civil war in that country and, as the Guatemalan conflict
subsides, is steadily repatriating them.  In 1994 Mexico agreed
to accept Cuban refugees for the first time; only Cubans who
have relatives in Mexico able to support them, however, are
eligible.  The Cubans would not be issued work permits.  The
authorities generally do not inform asylum seekers at the
borders of their right to apply for asylum; the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that the authorities
expel about 100,000 aliens annually for illegally entering the
country.

Section 3  Respect for Political Rights:  The Right of Citizens
           to Change Their Government

Under the Constitution, citizens have the right to change their
government through periodic elections.  The PRI dominates
Mexican politics and has controlled the Government since the
party was founded in 1929.  It has won every presidential
election since then and has maintained power, in part, by
relying on public patronage, use of government and party
organizational resources, and, in the past, electoral fraud.

Mexico held nationwide federal elections on August 21, as well
as state and local contests in seven states.  Voters elected
the PRI candidate, Ernesto Zedillo, with approximately
50 percent of the vote.  Diego Fernandez de Cevallo, the
candidate of the right-of-center National Action Party, came in
second with almost 26 percent of the vote, while Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution
obtained 16 percent.  The PRI holds 95 of a total of 128 Senate
seats and 300 seats in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies.
Opposition parties increased their seats from 3 to 33 in the
Senate and from 180 to 198 in the Chamber of Deputies.  Two
seats remained unfilled due to legal challenges to election
results.

The elections were generally peaceful and orderly.  The
Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the
operations of the quasi-independent Federal Electoral Institute
(IFE), whose governing council was placed under the control of
nonpartisan, civilian directors.  The IFE oversaw the
compilation of a new voter registration list and distribution
of more than 40 million new voter identification cards.  The
IFE trained hundreds of thousands of polling officials, all
chosen by lottery, and, working with the election assistance
unit of the United Nations, helped prepare the more than 80,000
independent election observers, most of them affiliated with
NGO's and civic and labor organizations.

Some domestic observer groups, Mexican media outlets, and major
political parties conducted "quick count" operations which
confirmed the official results.  Some international observers,
including the National Democratic Institute and the
International Republican Institute, praised the Government and
the IFE for the handling of the elections, but also pointed out
numerous irregularities.  They criticized the progovernment
bias in the media and the use of government resources in
support of the ruling party.  The PRD and some NGO's claimed
that the Government and the PRI perpetrated widespread fraud,
including stuffing ballot boxes and multiple votes.  These
groups, however, have yet to substantiate their claims.
Election courts overturned results in a handful of
congressional and mayoral races because of irregularities or
fraud.  In cases where electoral courts determine fraud, they
void the results of the voting stations in question and
determine the outcome according to the returns from other
stations in the district.

A severe failure in the electoral process was the lack of any
meaningful prosecution of those accused of electoral crimes.
The Government appointed a special prosecutor for electoral
crimes, but the prosecutor was slow in dealing with some 400
complaints, including dozens accusing state governors and other
officials of using government resources to support candidates.
The special prosecutor brought charges only against a grammar
school principal and one candidate for requiring parents to
attend the candidate's campaign rally in order to retrieve
children's report cards.  Even in this case, a local judge
canceled the arrest warrants, and the principal and the
candidate face no criminal proceedings.

On the other hand, newly appointed Attorney General Lozano has
asked the Chamber of Deputies to strip congressional immunity
from two PRI Federal Deputies so that the special prosecutor
for electoral crimes may prosecute them for electoral
offenses.  This is the first time an Attorney General has made
such a request in connection with electoral crimes.

One of the continuing major obstacles to election reform is the
deeply entrenched antidemocratic tradition of unchecked power
exercised by local bosses ("caciques") over peasants in rural
areas.  These bosses often exercise control over virtually
every aspect of peasants' lives, including how they vote.  One
NGO that studied the results of the August 21 elections in a
remote district found that there were 30 percent more votes for
the PRI in polling places where no independent observers were
present.

Section 4  Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
           Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations
           of Human Rights

Although the CNDH is the official human rights ombudsman of the
Government, it is nominally independent of government control.
It has been very vocal and active in many cases, but
ineffectual in others, most notably the problems in Chiapas.
NGO representatives charge that in addition to the obvious
problem of lack of any enforcement authority, the CNDH lacks
autonomy and has become too large and bureaucratic.  They also
criticize the state commissions for being ineffectual.  In the
Chiatas conflict, NGO's contended that PGR and CNDH activities
were frequently inadequate and even negligent, and that the PGR
in particular was more interested in protecting the army's
reputation than in conducting independent and thorough
investigations of alleged military abuses.

In the wake of the Chiapas uprising, numerous international
NGO's visited Mexico to investigate allegations of human rights
violations.  While some of these organizations complained about
government limits placed on access to conflict areas, the
situation steadily improved.  In April one Mexican NGO
complained that the military Attorney General's office had
asked it to answer questions regarding the factual basis for
the group's assertions regarding a human rights case against
the army.  It also asked for details on the group's activities
in Chiapas and when the organization intended to leave the
state.

Upon publication of the CNDH annual report in June, the
Commission's president highlighted the problems of government
inaction on more than half the Commission's recommendations, of
state governors not supporting state commissions, and "severe
financial problems."  In particular, the CNDH cited 103
recommendations which authorities had been "negligent" in
implementing.  Then President Salinas publicly called for
implementation.  By the end of July, the CNDH reported that
enough progress had been made in 70 of the 103 recommendations
(20 by full implementation) that it no longer considered the
authorities as negligent.

In July military authorities prevented 20 members of an
international human rights delegation from traveling to the
Chiapas community of Morelia.  An immigration official at the
scene stated that his superiors had declared the community
off-limits to foreigners.

The National Network of Civil Organizations for Human Rights
reported 86 incidents of harassment of human rights advocates
from April to July, including 10 detentions and 20 cases of
illegal search.  Military forces conducted searches beyond
their authority, and police conducted searches without
warrants.  The report specifically implicated authorities in
many, but not all, of the 86 cases.  Many NGO's working on
campaign reform issues reported receiving death threats.

Defense Minister Antonio Riviello imprisoned Gen. Jose
Francisco Gallardo Rodriguez in November 1993 on a range of
charges, including embezzlement and dishonoring the military.
The embezzlement charges, which Gallardo claims were abandoned
for lack of evidence, date back 5 years.  Gallardo maintains
that military authorities are persecuting him because of an
academic dissertation calling for the establishment of a
military human rights ombudsman's office.  The authorities
continued to hold Gallardo under extraordinary security.

Section 5  Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion,
           Disability, Language, or Social Status

The Constitution states that men and women are equal before the
law.  It also provides that education should sustain the ideals
of "fraternity and equal rights of all mankind, avoiding
privileges of race, sects, groups, sexes, or individuals."

     Women

Although the Constitution provides for equality between the
sexes, neither the authorities nor society in general respect
this in practice.  The most serious violation of women's rights
involves domestic and sexual violence, which is believed to be
widespread and underreported.  Domestic assault is a crime, but
in 10 states the "right to correct" wife and children is not a
crime unless this abuse involves cruelty or unnecessary
frequency.  Women are reluctant to report abuse or file
charges, and even when notified, the police are reluctant to
intervene in what is considered a domestic matter.

The Attorney General's Office operates rape crisis centers
located in the Federal District and the states of Mexico,
Queretaro, and Baja California.  Few women, however, avail
themselves of the centers' services.  In 1993 only 3,400
approached the Mexico City center; the city has a female
population of at least 10 million.

The legal treatment of women's rights is uneven.  Women have
the right to own property in their own names, and to file for
separation and divorce.  However, in some states a woman may
not bring suit to establish paternity and thereby obtain child
support, unless the child was a product of rape or
cohabitation, the child resides with the father, or there is
written proof of paternity.

The Labor Code provides that women shall have the same rights
and the same obligations as men, and that "equal pay shall be
given for equal work performed in equal posts, hours of work
and conditions of efficiency."  According to a 1994 CNDH study,
employers frequently required women to certify that they were
not pregnant at the time of hiring.

The CNDH study also found that the largest number of complaints
received involved negligence or abuse during childbirth by
medical personnel and charges of forced sterilizations.  The
study noted that most sterilizations occurred in public
hospitals when the patients were poor, illiterate, and not
informed of the consequences of the medical procedure.  The
CNDH recommended that medical administrators train their staff
to be more aware when dealing with such patients.

     Children

There is no societal pattern of abuse against children, but
children's advocates report many cases of such abuse.  Children
under the age of 18 make up 40 percent of the population.  An
estimated 12,000 live on the streets, many having left or been
driven from their homes by alcoholic or drug-addicted parents.
The children themselves often become involved with alcohol,
drugs, prostitution, and petty thievery.  While the Government
and NGO's conduct a number of programs for street children, the
problem is exacerbated by corrupt police who pressure street
children to commit petty crimes and extort the profits from
them.  The CNDH has a program for protection of children's
rights which includes educating children on their rights and
reviewing legislation to ensure compliance with international
conventions on children's rights.

     Indigenous People

The indigenous population has long been the object of
discriminatory treatment, which contributed to the social
inequities in Chiapas that led to the January rebellion.  That
uprising focused unprecedented interest on the demands of
Indians in that state for increased economic and social
rights.  As peace talks developed, it was clear that the EZLN's
basic demands included that the Government enact measures to
protect indigenous cultures, establish self-governing
autonomous regions in indigenous areas, and provide more
opportunity for employment in indigenous areas.  Although the
peace talks stalled, the Government appeared willing to
consider these demands, not only for the Indians of Chiapas but
for all of Mexico's indigenous groups.  In December the Zedillo
administration initiated a program to implement land reform
laws in Chiapas and targeted tens of thousands of hectares for
distribution to peasants.

The Government, through the INI and the CNDH, operates programs
to educate indigenous groups, many of members of which do not
speak Spanish, about their political and human rights, and it
generally professes respect for their desire to retain elements
of their traditional lifestyle.  The CNDH received 137
complaints from indigenous people.  At year's end, it had
resolved 73 complaints and 64 were pending.

Some 131 NGO's in Mexico are dedicated to the promotion and
protection of indigenous rights.  Indigenous people do not live
on independently governed reservations, although some
indigenous communities exercise considerable local control over
economic and social issues.  These communities apply
traditional law to resolve a variety of disputes, including
allegations of crimes.  However, these groups remain largely
outside the country's political and economic mainstream, a
result of longstanding patterns of economic and social
development, and in many cases their ability to participate in
decisions affecting their lands, cultural traditions, and the
allocation of natural resources is negligible.

The 1992 reforms in agrarian law were expected to promote
economic development in the countryside, but indigenous groups
generally perceived the reforms as intended to break up
indigenous communal landholdings and prevent the groups from
obtaining title to new lands.  As noted earlier, despite the
1991 amendment to the Federal law which requires an interpreter
to be present at every stage of criminal proceedings, the
courts continued to try and sentence indigenous people without
the benefit of interpreters.  Knowledge of the Spanish language
is essential to work outside indigenous areas, and non-Spanish
speakers are frequently taken advantage of in commercial
transactions involving bilingual middlemen.

Although the law provides some protections for the indigenous,
and the Government provides Indian communities support through
social and economic assistance programs, the legal guarantees
and social welfare programs are not sufficient to provide the
Indians the basic support and standards they expect.

     Religious Minorities

In the wake of the Chiapas conflict, several Catholic leaders
and groups accused of inciting the EZLN armed uprising received
death threats.  San Cristobal city officials reportedly
orchestrated an effort in concert with other prominent figures
to have the Bishop, considered by many observers as sympathetic
to the EZLN, removed from office and expelled.  In the Chiapas
town of Altamirano, town leaders and other citizens accused
Catholic nuns operating a clinic of being EZLN supporters and
subjected them to intimidation designed to make them leave the
community.  Military and civil police authorities allegedly
allowed the intimidation to proceed.  The CNDH is investigating
both cases.

The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) complained that the
Government selectively leaked documents alleging Jesuit ties to
the Chiapas uprising and other armed movements.  For example, a
Mexico City daily published what it said was information from
Mexican intelligence authorities claiming that EZLN leader
Subcomandante Marcos was a Jesuit priest.  The story was
quickly proven untrue, but the Attorney General's Office
declined to prosecute the newspaper for libel.  The Government
also rejected the Jesuits' request that it issue statements
correcting this and other media stories linking the order to
the EZLN.  The Jesuits also complained about unauthorized raids
on Jesuit facilities in Veracruz, Chiapas, and Guererro.  In
the Guererro case, 6 heavily armed intruders allegedly broke
into a retreat house and held priests, lay workers, and 20
novices hostage while they cut phone lines, ransacked the
premises, and took away documents.  The local police refused to
investigate unless the Jesuits could identify the individuals
who took part in the raids.  The Jesuits also received numerous
bomb and death threats; in one instance the caller ominously
alluded to the 1991 mass murder of Jesuits in El Salvador.

In the highlands of Chiapas and other indigenous areas, elected
officials sometimes acquiesced in or actually ordered the
expulsions of Protestants belonging primarily to evangelical
groups.  In many cases the expulsions involved the burning of
homes and crops, beatings, and, occasionally, killings.  The
most significant example of religious expulsions occurred in
San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, where authorities expelled an
estimated 15,000 evangelicals over the past 20 years.

In August state authorities and the CNDH worked out an
agreement for about 500 evangelicals to return to San Juan
Chamula.  An earlier attempt to return to the community at the
beginning of the year was unsuccessful, as the residents beat
the returnees and drove them out of town.  The evangelicals
later retaliated by holding the town mayor hostage; one person
was killed when the mayor was rescued.  In October a mob
murdered three evangelical returnees.  The authorities
immediately arrested four suspects but later released them.
Both sides are armed, and state officials and human rights
groups continued to monitor the situation at year's end.

     People with Disabilities

The law requires access for handicapped persons to public
facilities in Mexico City, but not elsewhere in Mexico.  In
practice, however, most public buildings and facilities do not
comply with the law.  Special education programs for people
with disabilities are not widely available.