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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMPROMISE AFTER CONFLICT
Policing the
Mexican Past
Transitional Justice in a
Post-authoritarian Regime
Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict
Series Editor
John D. Brewer
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast, UK
This series aims to bring together in one series scholars from around the
world who are researching the dynamics of post-conflict transformation
in societies emerging from communal conflict and collective violence.
The series welcomes studies of particular transitional societies emerging
from conflict, comparative work that is cross-national, and theoretical
and conceptual contributions that focus on some of the key processes in
post-conflict transformation. The series is purposely interdisciplinary and
addresses the range of issues involved in compromise, reconciliation and
societal healing. It focuses on interpersonal and institutional questions,
and the connections between them.
More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14641
Policing the Mexican

Past
Transitional Justice in a
Post-authoritarian Regime
Centro de Investigación y Estudios Literarios de Aguascalientes
Universidad de las Artes de Aguascalientes
Aguascalientes, Mexico

ISBN 978-3-030-94406-3 ISBN 978-3-030-94407-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94407-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Jacky Chapman / Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
I am dedicating the book to two people:
To my mother, Concepción Rangel Pescador.
To the memory of Ana Paula Hernández Pontón.
Series Editor’s Preface

General Editor’s Introduction
Compromise is a much used but little understood term. There is a
sense in which it describes a set of feelings (the so-called spirit of compro-
mise) that involve reciprocity, representing the agreement to make mutual
concessions towards each other from now on: no matter what we did to
each other in the past, we will act towards each other in the future differ-
ently as set out in the agreement between us. The compromise settlement
can be a spit and a handshake, much beloved in folk lore, or a legally
binding statute with hundreds of clauses.
As such, it is clear that compromise enters into conflict transformation
at two distinct phases. The first is during the conflict resolution process
itself, where compromise represents a willingness amongst parties to
negotiate a peace agreement that represents a second-best preference in
which they give up their first preference (victory) in order to cut a deal. A
great deal of literature has been produced in Peace Studies and
International Relations on the dynamics of the negotiation process and
the institutional and governance structures necessary to consolidate the
agreement afterwards. Just as important, however, is compromise in the
second phase, when compromise is part of post-conflict reconstruction,
in which protagonists come to learn to live together despite their former
enmity and in face of the atrocities perpetrated during the conflict itself.
vii
viii Series Editor’s Preface
In the first phase, compromise describes reciprocal agreements between

parties to the negotiations in order to make political concessions suffi-
cient to end conflict; in the second phase, compromise involves victims
and perpetrators developing ways of living together in which concessions
are made as part of shared social life. The first is about compromises
between political groups and the state in the process of statebuilding (or
re-building) after the political upheavals of communal conflict, and the
second is about compromises between individuals and communities in
the process of social healing after the cultural trauma provoked by the
conflict.
This book series primarily concerns itself with the second process, the
often messy and difficult job of reconciliation, restoration and repair in
social and cultural relations following communal conflict. Communal
conflicts and civil wars tend to suffer from the narcissism of minor differ-
ences, to coin Freud’s phrase, leaving little to be split halfway and com-
promise on, and thus are usually especially bitter. The series therefore
addresses itself to the meaning, manufacture and management of com-
promise in one of its most difficult settings. The book series is cross-
national and cross-disciplinary, with attention paid to inter-personal
reconciliation at the level of everyday life, as well as culturally between
social groups, and the many sorts of institutional, inter-personal, psycho-
logical, sociological, anthropological and cultural factors that assist and
inhibit societal healing in all post-conflict societies, historically and in the
present. It focuses on what compromise means when people have to come
to terms with past enmity and the memories of the conflict itself, and
relate to former protagonists in ways that consolidate the wider political
agreement.
This sort of focus has special resonance and significance, for peace
agreements are usually very fragile. Societies emerging out of conflict are
subject to on-going violence from spoiler groups who are reluctant to
give up on first preferences, constant threats from the outbreak of renewed
violence, institutional instability, weakened economies, and a wealth of
problems around transitional justice, memory, truth recovery and victim-
hood, amongst others. Not surprisingly, therefore, reconciliation and
healing in social and cultural relations is difficult to achieve, not least
because inter-personal compromise between erstwhile enemies is difficult.
Series Editor’s Preface ix
Lay discourse picks up on the ambivalent nature of compromise after

conflict. It is talked about in common sense in one of two ways, in which
compromise is either a virtue or a vice, taking its place among the angels
or in Hades. One form of lay discourse likens concessions to former pro-
tagonists with the idea of restoration of broken relationships and societal
and cultural reconciliation, in which there is a sense of becoming (or
returning) to wholeness and completeness. The other form of lay dis-
course invokes ideas of appeasement, of being compromised by the con-
cessions, which constitute a form of surrender and reproduce (or disguise)
continued brokenness and division. People feel they continue to be
beaten by the sticks which the concessions have allowed others to keep;
with restoration, however, weapons are turned truly in ploughshares. Lay
discourse suggests, therefore, that these are issues that the Palgrave Studies
in Compromise after Conflict series must begin to problematize, so that
the process of societal healing is better understood and can be assisted
and facilitated by public policy and intervention.
The latest addition to the Series usefully reminds us that democratic
transitions are of many kinds, not just those from organized violence and
forms of terror but from authoritarian rule, including from communism
and South American dictatorships. Javier Trevino-Rangel’s analysis of
Mexico’s transition from authoritarian rule under President Fox high-
lights the generic problem in all transitions of how to deal with the past.
Indeed, how new democracies deal with state crimes in the past is a mea-
sure of their commitment to democratic values and practices going for-
ward. As the author shows, it is a taught tightrope and can be very fragile.
State crimes of former regimes in the past require management in ways
that do not destabilize the future. This is more of a problem for new
regimes where the former authoritarian elite, having lost political power,
nonetheless retains cultural, economic and social power. Comparative
examples come readily to mind here, including Sri Lanka and South
Africa. Northern Ireland’s power-sharing deal involves the division of
political power rather than its loss to the previous beneficiaries of minor-
ity rule, but the problem of dealing with the past remains an enduring
form of destabilisation on the future in the North of Ireland.
The author’s account is based on impressive documentary research in
public and private archives, and offers a critical account of the democratic
x Series Editor’s Preface
transition in Mexico. Policing the past when the military is allowed to

investigate and prosecute themselves, as Trevino-Rangel puts it, limits the
range of injustices to be investigated, constrains the processes and mecha-
nisms by which the past is interrogated, and results in impunity for past
wrongdoers rather than justice for victims. It is for this reason that the
author argues persuasively that transitional justice in Mexico’s democratic
transition assisted the beneficiaries of past injustices. This is not always so
in other comparative cases, and Trevino-Rangel carefully dissects the
features of Mexico’s democratic transition that made it so there.
The book offers a fascinating account of the strengths and weaknesses
of transitional justice in Mexico’s democratic transition as well of offering
salutatory lessons about the way past state crimes need to be managed in
ways that support and bolster democracy. There are specific and general
issues raised here, and as Series Editor, I warmly welcome this lat-
est addition to the Series.
Professor John Brewer

Belfast, November 2021
Acknowledgements
To complete this book I depended on many people and incurred count-

less debts. First, I would like to thank Dr. Claire Moon as, simply, this
book would have not been possible without her. She offered unequivocal
and continuous support and encouragement every step of the way. She
made rigorous, meaningful, and constructive comments on earlier drafts.
A dedicated scholar, she persistently urged me to revise.
My research was inspired by four people whose academic work has
determined my career. Professor Lorenzo Meyer encouraged my interest
in the history of Mexico’s authoritarian regime. Professor Sergio Aguayo
taught me about Mexico’s history of abuses. Claire Moon introduced me
to the field of transitional justice. Finally, Professor Stan Cohen taught
me about political crimes, gross human rights violations, and the sociol-
ogy of denial. I am profoundly grateful to them.
The Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award generously funded the first
four years of this research, and Mexico’s National Council on Science and
Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT)
financed the final year.
I am grateful to Professor Claire Alexander, Professor Robin Archer,
Professor Kieran McEvoy, and Professor Damien Short for reading and
commenting on chapters of this book. They helped me more than they
realise. I have also benefitted from the research and opinions of Dr. Peter
Manning and Professor Kevin Middlebrook.
xi
xii Acknowledgements
Fabián Sánchez granted me access to his files on human rights non-

governmental organizations (NGOs) in Mexico and helped me to make
sense of the politics of human rights activism in the country. Antonio
Garibay guided me through Mexico’s Kafkaesque legal system.
In Mexico, three academic institutions provided a friendly atmosphere
where I could finish my writing-up. I am grateful to Professor Gustavo
Vega and Dr. Fernanda Somuano for accepting me as a visiting researcher
at El Colegio de México. At the University of Aguascalientes, I am
indebted to Ricardo A. López-León, Juanis Zapata, and Omar Vázquez.
Juan Vázquez Gama, Claudia Quezada, and Jorge Terrones offered me a
space at the Universidad de las Artes in Aguascalientes, where I was able
to finish writing this book.
Three women offered invaluable help with the editing of the manu-
script. For tips on how to present Mexican legal jargon to an English-
speaking audience, I owe much to Alfonsina Peñaloza. A masterful fiction
writer, María Lourdes Pallais listened patiently to my ideas on the par-
ticular narrative of each chapter. This was important as Mexico’s reality—
as Gabriel García Márquez said—is far stranger than any fictional
invention. For good recommendations on style I thank Susannah Wight.
This was an itinerant book, written in four different cities. On my
travels, I have benefited from the help and hospitality of Gisela Calderón,
Julieta González, and James Seppälä in London; of the Chaverot and
Seppälä families in Paris; of Iván Ramírez, Ana Paula Hernández, Carlos
Aguirre, Ana Luisa Liguori, Eugenia Mazzucato, Mario Bronfman and
Diana Rubli, Ana Pecova, Diego Antoni in Mexico City; and of Guus
Zwitser, Alejandro Madrazo, Catalina Pérez Correa, Alonso and Diego
Rodríguez Eternod in Aguascalientes.
The most important support I have received has come from my friends
Angelica Seppälä, Juan Carlos Rosales, David Verduzco, and from my
brother Antonio Treviño Rangel. To them, my deepest gratitude.
Abstract
This book looks at how Mexico’s so-called new democratic regime led by
President Vicente Fox (2000–2006) faced past state crimes perpetrated
during the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI’s) seventy-year
authoritarian rule (1929–2000). To test the new regime’s democratic
viability, Fox’s administration had to settle accounts with the PRI for the
abuses the party had perpetrated in the past, but without upsetting it in
order to preserve the stability of the new regime. The PRI was still a pow-
erful political force and could challenge Fox’s efforts to democratise—
‘modernise’—the country. Hence, this book offers an explanation of the
factors that facilitated the emergence of Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ pro-
cess without putting at risk Fox’s relationship with the authoritarian elite.
This book is framed by a cluster of literature on transitional justice
which follows a social-constructivist approach, and it is supported by
exhaustive documentary research, which I carried out in public and pri-
vate archives. It argues that Fox’s administration established a Special
Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) as he sought to conduct ‘transitional justice’
through the existing structures of power: laws and institutions adminis-
tered by members of the previous authoritarian regime. President Fox
opted to face past abuses but left the task in the hands of the institutions
whose members had carried out the crimes or did nothing to prevent
them. The PRI rapidly accepted the establishment of the SPO because
the most relevant prosecutorial strategy to come to terms with the PRI
xiii
xiv Abstract
was arranged by the PRI’s own elite during the authoritarian era—pros-
ecutorial strategy that led to impunity.
In this process, the language of human rights played a decisive role as
it framed the SPO’s investigations into the past: it determined the kind
of violations that qualified for enquiry and, hence, the type of victims
who were counted in the process, which perpetrators would be subject to
prosecution, and the authorities that would intervene. Categories of
human rights violations (e.g. genocide or forced disappearance) were
constructed and manipulated in such a way as to grant a de facto amnesty
to perpetrators. The Fox administration was able to preserve the stability
of the new democratic regime as his prosecutorial strategies never really
threatened the authoritarian elite.
In other words, the book offers a critical perspective on transitional
justice. According to the dominant literature on the subject, transitional
justice should contribute to the advancement of liberal democracy and,
consequently, generate the following benefits: truth, justice, political rec-
onciliation, and peace. In contrast, this book argues, Mexico is a case of
transitional injustice: it is an example of how in some societies transi-
tional justice mechanisms are intentionally implemented in ways that,
instead of generating justice, produce impunity.
Contents
1 Policing the Mexican Past 1
2 The Background: Authoritarianism and Past Atrocity

in Mexico 21
3 Transitional Justice: A Field of Practice and of Knowledge 67
4 Neither Inevitable Nor Necessary: The Emergence of

Mexico’s ‘Transitional Justice’ Process127
5 Making up ‘Transitional Justice’: Defining, Classifying,

and Acting on Human Rights Abuses175
6 The SPO’s Retributive Goals: A De Facto Amnesty221
7 Conclusions275
Index297
xv
1
Policing the Mexican Past
Introduction
Vicente Fox’s victory in the 2000 presidential elections in Mexico ended
the 71-year-old political rule of a single political party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI). The
PRI regime stayed in power for more than seven decades for four main
reasons. First, the state actively intervened to limit social and political
pluralism: the hegemonic party (the PRI) created an adverse environ-
ment for independent participation—no significant social movement or
political group could exist outside the official party. Opposition political
parties were marginal (Eisenstadt 2004; Loaeza 1999). Second, the PRI
regime successfully demobilised groups not part of the government: the
state controlled mass participation through worker and peasant unions,
which were incorporated into the official party (Meyer 1980; Ortega-
Ortiz 2008). Third, the centralisation of power allowed the executive
power to manipulate mass media, censor intellectual critics, co-opt dis-
sidents, and use public funds for private ends (Aguayo 1998; Meyer
1977). Finally, and crucially, the regime brutally neutralised its enemies—
a powerful security apparatus (e.g. police, secret police, and the military)
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

J. Trevino-Rangel, Policing the Mexican Past, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after
Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94407-0_1
2 J. Trevino-Rangel
repressed thousands of dissidents of the regime (Aguayo 2001a; Stevens

1970). The use of kidnappings, torture, forced disappearances, and assas-
sinations to attack the regime’s opposition was not an isolated practice
perpetrated by ‘rotten apples’ in the army. The abuses were part of an
official policy maintained for decades (Aguayo 2001b; Doyle 2003;
Rodríguez Munguía 2006). Hence, since the late 1960s, there was a gen-
eral consensus on the authoritarian nature of the Mexican political regime
(Eisenstadt 2000; González Casanova 1965; Kaufman Purcell 1973;
Keck and Sikkink 1998; Linz 1975; Meyer 1977; Middlebrook 1986;
Needleman and Needleman 1969).
The triumph of Vicente Fox’s conservative National Action Party
(Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) in 2000 was the culmination of a slow
process of political openness and of the gradual liberalisation of the PRI
regime, which resulted from a succession of reforms initiated in the 1970s
(Eisenstadt 2004; Loaeza 1999; Ortega-Ortiz 2000). However, for many
observers, Fox’s victory was not the end of transition, but rather a point
from which a series of political and social reforms could be implemented
in order to consolidate a democratic regime in Mexico, for example, the
transformation of the judicial system, the reform of the police and the
intelligence services, and the incorporation of human rights norms into
local legislation (Middlebrook 2004).1 Thus, the 2000 presidential elec-
tion was a decisive step in the protracted democratisation process as it
was, in part, the result of the electoral reforms that preceded it, but it was
not the conclusion of the democratisation process. In the government’s
official discourse and from the standpoint of many observers, Fox’s
administration was rather its starting point, which, through diverse
reforms, would eventually lead to the consolidation of democracy. Hence,
Fox’s ascendance to power, more than a change of the ruling party, estab-
lished a change of regime—the transition from an authoritarian system
to an incipient democracy (Bruhn 2004; Middlebrook 2004; Ortega-
Ortiz 2008).
1
The term ‘consolidation’, as used both in Mexico’s official discourse and by scholars in Mexico’s
transition, refers to the strengthening of some elements of democratic rule: respect for minimum
individual rights (such as freedoms of expression) and protection from arbitrary state intervention;
the consolidation of fair and clean elections; and institutional mechanisms to ensure that citizens
can make public actors accountable for their public deeds. See, for instance, O’Donnell and
Schmitter (1986) and Middlebrook (2004: 2).
Immediately after the July 2000 election, the team of the newly elected
President Fox designed a series of governmental programmes with the
intention of democratising the country (Poder Ejecutivo Federal 2001b).
Within the list of urgent institutional changes the new administration
sought to carry out—reforms in national security, freedom of informa-
tion issues, and a fiscal scheme—President Fox included ‘transitional jus-
tice’ as a priority (Presidencia de la República 2000). In this regard,
‘transitional justice’ was one of the first and foundational acts of the new
democratic regime, which would serve to accentuate and legitimate its
authority and moral right to govern.
Fox’s ‘transitional justice’ promise was supported by national and inter-
national human rights scholars, experts, and activists who demanded
accountability for the abuses perpetrated during the previous regime as a
requirement for democratic consolidation (HRW 2003). From this per-
spective, by punishing the guilty, President Fox aimed to put an end to
decades of impunity and to send a signal that in the new democratic
regime no one was above the law. In addition, human rights experts
claimed that the investigation of tainted institutions that made the abuses
possible—for example, the army, the police, and the intelligence ser-
vices—would allow Fox’s government to begin the reform and democra-
tisation of such institutions (Benítez Manaut 2008; Rodríguez Sumano
2008). In sum, the establishment of a ‘transitional justice’ process in
Mexico aimed to send clear message that, unlike the PRI, the new regime
was committed to human rights.
However, some of the new administration’s cabinet members were
openly against any attempt to come to address the past. They believed
that the consolidation of democracy required other reforms (e.g. the fiscal
system reform), which depended on the PRI’s approval.2 From this per-
spective, the new administration could not pretend to investigate and
prosecute the members of a political party—the PRI—with which
President Fox sought to reach agreements and negotiate reforms. The PRI
was still a dominant political force—powerful enough to challenge the
2
These political changes included judicial or tax reforms, changes in military–civil relations, and
transformations in the relationship between the state and labour unions and the business sector.
See, for instance, Bensunsán (2004), Ai Camp (2004), Lawson (2004) and Magaloni and
Zepeda (2004).
4 J. Trevino-Rangel
new government in many areas and undermine Fox’s chances of success.

The PRI was the largest party in Congress after the 2000 elections and so
it was capable of blocking President Fox’s reforms. At the state level, the
PRI controlled eighteen out of the thirty-two states. Moreover, officials
implicated in violations (e.g. members of the military) were never dis-
missed. Therefore, members of Fox’s cabinet argued that the most sensi-
ble option for the new administration was to bury any attempt at
accountability. This group was joined by the complaints of the members
of the same PRI who had openly warned that they would not be willing
to tolerate Fox using ‘transitional justice’ to discredit their party.
President Fox and his strategists faced a series of dilemmas. In order
to test the new regime’s democratic viability, Fox sought to end an era of
impunity, but by prosecuting former perpetrators of past human rights
violations, he placed at risk the incipient stability of the new regime.
To implement important reforms to consolidate Mexico’s democracy,
Fox had to negotiate with the PRI, which was now a powerful party in
the opposition. But to negotiate with the former ‘official party’ certain
reforms to democratise the political system implied preserving the previ-
ous regime’s impunity. The new administration had to settle accounts
with the PRI for the abuses perpetrated in the past, but without upsetting
it in order to negotiate the reforms necessary to advance democratisation.
The way in which the Fox government solved this dilemma—comply-
ing with demands to face the past, without disturbing the PRI elites—is
the topic of this book. Supported by exhaustive documentary research,
conducted over six years in public and private archives, this book offers
an explanation of the many factors that facilitated the emergence of
Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process without putting at risk its relation-
ship with political elites from the previous authoritarian regime. In doing
so, this book identifies some of the most significant consequences of the
so-called transitional justice process in Mexico’s democratisation.
Mexico’s ‘Transitional Justice’ Process

The so-called transitional justice process formally began with the change
of regime in 2000. With the arrival of Fox to the presidency, a significant
debate began in Mexico about whether or not to come to terms with the
past in the first place. Simultaneously, another no less important debate
centred on whether to face the past through a restorative or a retributive
model of justice—a truth commission or a prosecutor’s office. ‘Transitional
justice’ became a site for political negotiations and moral justifications,
for the construction of rules and institutions, where diverse state and
non-state actors intervened, and sought to impose their political agendas.
This controversy lasted almost a year. On November 27, 2001,
President Fox established a Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) to investi-
gate and prosecute the perpetrators of past human rights violations (Poder
Ejecutivo Federal 2001a). There were no temporal limits to the operation
of the SPO. It could prolong its work sine die.
However, the SPO officially ceased to exist when President Fox ended
his term in office on November 30, 2006. The SPO cost twenty million
dollars, but its investigations led nowhere (Aguayo and Trevino-Rangel
2007). During its five years of existence, the SPO did not obtain a single
criminal conviction (HRW 2006; ICTJ 2008).
Visions on Transitional Justice

Academic research on Mexico’s process of ‘transitional justice’ is still vis-
ibly limited (Acosta and Ennelin 2006; Aguayo and Trevino-Rangel
2006, 2007; Bickford 2005; Dutrénit & Argüello 2011; Rangel and
Sánchez 2015; Ramírez 2018). Most of these chapters are descriptive in
nature: they take the SPO as a departure point and from there describe
its alleged benefits and flaws. The silence around Mexico’s SPO is particu-
larly noteworthy in the transitional justice literature, as transitional jus-
tice is the main field of enquiry that seeks to explore how states and
societies deal with past atrocities in political transitions. By offering a
complete account of the diverse factors that facilitated the emergence
6 J. Trevino-Rangel
(and policing) of Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process, this book attempts

to address this void in the literature.
The concept of ‘transitional justice’ emerged during the mid-1990s,
reflecting the different ways in which at that time certain transitional
societies sought to address past state crimes (Arthur 2009; Bell 2009). It
arose with reference to three particular processes of political change: the
democratisation of some Latin American countries (e.g. Argentina, Chile,
and Uruguay) in the 1980s and early 1990s; the dismantling of the Soviet
Union and, thus, the political liberalisation of former communist states
in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s; and the end of apartheid in
South Africa in the mid-1990s (Cohen 1995; Teitel 2003). Since then,
transitional justice has been the favoured label to describe efforts to deal
with past human rights abuses within societies going through political
transitions: in countries transitioning from dictatorships to more demo-
cratic rule and in transitions from war or civil conflict to peace (Bell et al.
2004; Ni Aolain and Campbell 2005; Root 2009). However, in the last
decade the concept of ‘transitional justice’ has gradually expanded—
beyond accountability and transitions to democracy—to include a wide
set of practices carried out by different societies seeking to amend past
atrocity and suffering—what Claire Moon (2008) terms cases of ‘histori-
cal injustice’ (e.g. Australia’s strategies to repair the damage caused to its
Aboriginal population in the past). Today, the concept of transitional
justice even encompasses efforts to address the suffering of victims of cur-
rent organised crime-related violence in countries such as Colombia
or Mexico.
But transitional justice is not only a set of practices established in dif-
ferent countries in ‘transitional’ contexts. It is also a growing, heteroge-
neous, and powerful field of academic enquiry (Bell 2009). Moreover,
transitional justice has become a site in which activists work, a field of
‘policy expertise’, a domain for a new sort of human rights activity. Hence,
this book considers that transitional justice comprises both a set of ideas
(knowledge) and a sphere of practices, actions, and intervention (power).
In the mid-1990s, a first cluster of studies on transitional justice cen-
tred mainly on a conceptual and doctrinal debate that revolves around
two interpretations of justice—retributive or restorative—on which most
characteristic institutions to face the past, the tribunals and the truth
commissions, have been founded (Hayner 1994; Orentlicher 1991).

Retributive justice is identified with the punishment of perpetrators of
abuses according to the rule of law (Zalaquett 1989). The restorative
model of justice proposes to restore the dignity of victims by compensat-
ing them for the suffering they endured without, necessarily, the need to
identify or punish the perpetrators (Minow 2000).
Although these approaches (retributive and restorative) differ in the
way in which they suggest facing the past, they share the idea that transi-
tional justice is useful given the alleged moral, normative, or social ben-
efits it generates (Malamud-Goti 1989; McAdams 1997; Méndez 1997;
Minow 2008; Zalaquett 1989). Moreover, echoing the early enthusiasm
of transitional justice practitioners, the authors who make up this cluster
focused on a series of explanations for the diverse—and sometimes con-
tradictory—merits of transitional justice. They point out that it strength-
ens the new regime’s democratic institutions, averts the repetition of
abuses in the future, aids political reconciliation, and has a therapeutic
effect on society. These arguments circulate within this cluster as appar-
ently incontrovertible truths, as ‘articles of faith’ (Ignatieff 1996;
Mendeloff 2004).
More recently, a second cluster on transitional justice emerged. Its
authors partly draw on the existing body of work on retributive and
restorative justice. As with the first cluster, this group of authors assumes
that the establishment of transitional justice is indispensable in societies
that have suffered abuses. However, the literature of the second cluster
differs from that of the first cluster in one main way. Scholars in the sec-
ond cluster consider that transitional justice has proved unable to deliver
the benefits promised to society—political reconciliation, social healing,
and public acknowledgement of the suffering of victims (Ensalco 1994;
Goldblatt and Meintjes 1998; Sideris 2001). These scholars have focused
on how to make transitional justice work better, with the purpose of truly
delivering the benefits it should theoretically be able to provide. To do so,
they have examined transitional justice institutions and proposed diverse
methods to measure or quantify their scope and effects on society, new
‘tools of transition management’, with the objective of them achieving
more effective change in society (Arenhovel 2008; Mallinder 2007; Stahn
2005). Additionally, these studies have suggested extending the original
8 J. Trevino-Rangel
scope and goals of transitional justice, for example, gender, social, and
cultural or economic development (Meintjes, et al. 2001; Pillay 2001).
Despite their differences, scholars writing in the two clusters share the
same values: transitional justice is ‘intrinsic’ in transitions; transitional
justice is ‘good’ because of the benefits it brings with it, for example,
democracy, societal healing, and reconciliation; ‘all good things go
together’, for example, truth has a cathartic effect, which leads to healing,
which leads to reconciliation; even if transitional justice fails, the scholars
offer to accomplish it by better means.
But there is third cluster of studies on transitional justice that, although
it is still marginal, emerged as a reaction to the two aforementioned clus-
ters. This third academic cluster, framed by a social-constructivist
approach, raises concerns about practices and the more familiar ideas in
transitional justice (Ainley 2008; Christodoulidis 2001; Du Bois 2001;
McEvoy 2007; Ross 2003; Short 2007; Veitch 2001; Wilson 2001).
Authors in this cluster, sceptical of the assumptions accepted and pro-
moted as self-evident by transitional justice activists and scholars, have
exposed their contingent character (Moon 2008). Unlike the first and
second clusters of literature, scholars participating in this social-
constructivist approach do not seek to ‘promote’ or ‘rectify’ transitional
justice values or practices. They are instead concerned with analysing how
transitional justice came to be an authoritative guide for thinking about
and acting on the past in transitional societies (Wilson 2001). Thus, the
third cluster examines how claims about transitional justice are con-
structed, and how such claims affect the implementation of policies.
From this perspective, transitional justice and human rights are not self-
evident ideas, but the outcome of social actions and political interven-
tions. This is a body of academic enquiry that seeks to understand the
contingent and contextual factors that make the emergence and policing
of transitional justice knowledge and practices possible. These scholars
have sought to prove that far from being a necessary condition in transi-
tions, as activists and experts on this issue would have us believe, transi-
tional justice has mediated political agendas in conflict (Moon 2008).
According to these explanations, rather than seeking moral and social
benefits, transitional justice has served political interests (Short 2007).
For example, in South Africa it served to bolster the construction of a
new nation state and to maintain the political stability of the post-
apartheid regime (Wilson 2001).
This book follows the research agenda opened by the third cluster of
literature on transitional justice. The implication of this agenda, from a
theoretical perspective, is that it problematises the feeling of inevitability
that surrounds these types of institutions and challenges the ‘articles of
faith’ upheld faithfully by scholars of the first and second literature clus-
ters. From an empirical perspective, this agenda’s most significant impli-
cation is that it opens the door to investigate transitional justice episodes
as processes that far from being inherent to transitions have instead been
instrumental to the legitimacy of incipient democratic regimes, and
whose creation is the result of social and political manipulation.
Thus, from this perspective, this book claims that the so-called transi-
tional justice institutions in Mexico were neither necessary nor indispens-
able for transition, nor take as valid the alleged merits of transitional
justice that promoters describe. This book demonstrates the contingent
character of Mexico’s apparent transitional justice and shows the political
purposes it served in the democratisation process. This work must thus be
understood as a contribution to the theoretical and empirical agenda
opened up by this third academic cluster, given that it offers a detailed
account of how Mexican so-called transitional justice, far from bringing
moral or social benefits, became a site for the negotiation of political
agendas whose results benefitted Fox’s administration and, more impor-
tantly, the PRI elite. It shows how Mexico’s apparent transitional justice
process was not inevitable, but contingent. As the PRI was still influential
enough to thwart the stability of the new democracy, President Fox could
have articulated a policy of oblivion (such as Spain’s ‘pact of forgetting’
about the repressive legacy of the Francoist dictatorship). Alternatively, as
the truth commission method was so popular during Fox’s first year in
office, he could have established a Mexican truth commission (I will
return to this point in Chap. 4). But he did not. Instead, a SPO emerged
with the critical consequence that it helped to perpetuate the impunity of
perpetrators.
10 J. Trevino-Rangel
The Policing of the Past

Many observers had seen in ‘transitional justice’ proof that Fox’s admin-
istration really sought to advance democratisation in the country (HRW
2006). However, three years after being initiated, the SPO’s results were
disappointing: not a single criminal was in jail, the public found it diffi-
cult to access the former secret police’s files, and the victims still had not
received reparations. It seemed that ‘transitional justice’ had not gener-
ated the merits that some academics and activists claimed it would. On
the contrary, in Mexico ‘transitional justice’ seemed to be manufacturing
impunity.
Victims and human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
immediately blamed the Fox administration. They claimed that the SPO’s
‘failure’ was related to the lack of funding, lack of political will, and poor
handling of prosecutions (Acosta and Ennelin 2006; HRW 2003). As a
result, they demanded more resources and better lawyers so the SPO
could do its job efficiently. But, were they correct? I found this explana-
tion unsatisfying. The SPO was actually receiving considerable resources
(close to four million dollars) every year. And the sometimes sophisti-
cated strategies of the SPO were scrupulously guided by international
human rights law. So why did things go terribly wrong?
An explanation about the factors that led to this outcome—impu-
nity—demanded more in-depth research into the historical development
of the ‘transitional justice’ process, and especially the effect of the dilemma
Fox’s government faced at its very origins: confronting the PRI elite with-
out upsetting it. How was Fox able to solve this transition dilemma and,
more importantly, how did the way in which it was solved affect the
outcomes of ‘transitional justice’, which included neither truth nor jus-
tice? In other words, what factors in such a complex political context
facilitated the emergence of the ‘transitional justice’ process, and did
these factors lead to its results—that is, impunity?
By means of a detailed documentary analysis of private and public
archives, this book provides answers to such questions. The ‘transitional
justice’ process instituted by Vicente Fox was in no way intrinsic or neces-
sary to Mexico’s democratisation. President Fox opted to establish
‘transitional justice’ in his first year in office for three political and prag-
matic reasons. First, the ‘transitional justice’ process contributed to vali-
date the Fox government’s democratic credentials and showed its
commitment to human rights. Second, strategically, by creating the ‘rules
of the game’, Fox could regulate the participation of the other actors
involved: activists, academics, human rights NGOs, victims’ relatives, or
left-wing political groups such as the Revolutionary Democratic Party
(Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD)—whose members
demanded to know the truth of what happened and to see justice done—
as well as those members of the new government who were not necessar-
ily loyal to President Fox himself and who disagreed with his stance (e.g.
members of the cabinet who promoted the establishment of a truth com-
mission). Third, by establishing a retributive justice model (the SPO),
President Fox sought to conduct the ‘transitional justice’ process through
the existing structures of power: laws and institutions that were operated
by members of the previous authoritarian regime (the courts, the attor-
ney general). So, Fox opted to face past abuses but left the task in the
hands of the institutions whose members had carried out the crimes or
did nothing to prevent them. The result of this operation was that Fox
was able to preserve the stability of the new regime as his prosecutorial
strategies never really threatened the PRI elite. This is the reason why the
PRI did not oppose the ‘transitional justice’ process.
In addition, the PRI rapidly accepted (in fact, promoted) the establish-
ment of the SPO because some of the prosecutorial strategies to come to
terms with the PRI were arranged by the PRI’s own elite during the
authoritarian era—prosecutorial strategies that led to impunity. Therefore,
this book argues, in the new democratic regime, the actors of the previous
authoritarian system sought to protect the impunity they had enjoyed in
the past. They did not have sufficient power to oppose ‘transitional jus-
tice’ mechanisms completely, but did preserve sufficient power to inter-
vene in their making. The PRI elite could not slow down the ‘transitional
justice’ process, but was able to influence its effects.
Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process preserved the impunity of perpe-
trators. The language of human rights played a decisive role. It was the
language of human rights that framed the SPO’s investigations into the
past: the kind of human rights violations that qualified for enquiry and,
hence, the type of victims who were counted in the process, the perpetra-
tors of certain crimes who would be subject to prosecution, and the insti-
tution and authorities that would intervene. However, categories of
human rights violations (e.g. genocide or i) were constructed and manip-
ulated in such a way as to grant a de facto amnesty to perpetrators.
Even if the ‘transitional justice’ process did not obtain truth or justice,
it brought about important consequences for the Fox administration. It
helped to legitimise key political institutions (e.g. the police, the Attorney
General’s Office, and the military) still working under authoritarian
premises; it helped to improve the image of the justice system, which
seemed no longer to be subordinated to the president as it was during the
PRI era; it granted a de facto amnesty to former perpetrators and did not
expose tainted officials, who were then incorporated into the new demo-
cratic system as if nothing had happened; and it blocked other ‘transi-
tional justice’ efforts (e.g. a truth commission).
It is important to clarify what I mean by the language of human rights.
By human rights discourse, language of human rights, or human rights
talk, this book refers to the set of ideas, assumptions, rules, concepts, and
categories codified mainly through the vocabulary of international law
which generates practices, institutions, and mechanisms for its imple-
mentation and rule (Chinkin 1998; Evans 1998, 2005; Fields and Narr
1992; Stammers 1999).3 This language includes ideas and practices about
human rights accountability in transitions to democracy. I assume that
these ideas on human rights are not objective, but political. They are
discussed, adopted, adapted, worked out, clarified, manipulated, and
contested. They are in constant flux and a great number of actors—such
as state agents, human rights experts, academics, and activists—intervene
in their development, promotion, surveillance, rectification, or replace-
ment. Therefore, these ideas are historically situated and formed within
an assemblage of institutions, advocates, newspapers articles, lawyers,
court decisions, legal proceedings, NGO reports, and so on. The lan-
guage of human rights has material effects—for example, human rights
commissions, truth commissions, ad hoc tribunals, and special prosecu-
tor offices—and their materiality is consequential on transitional societies.
3
The United Nations system has articulated human rights discourses through numerous interna-
tional treaties and conventions, which states later adopt and adapt (Chinkin 1998).
In Mexico’s transitional moment, the language of human rights was

particularly relevant for two reasons: First, because the Fox administra-
tion used human rights talk as a language of political legitimation.
President Fox and his strategists deployed this human rights rhetoric in
order to demonstrate the new regime’s commitment to democracy; they
sought to underline the discontinuity between the authoritarian era
and the new democratic government. For example, the Fox administra-
tion justified—a priori or ex post facto—in the name of human rights
every decision related to the process of ‘transitional justice’. If a truth
commission was promised and then never instituted, Fox justified
simultaneously his promise and then his refusal to fulfil his promise in
the name of human rights. For instance, he has stated both that ‘to
know the truth via a truth commission is an obligation according to
human rights international law’, and that ‘Mexico cannot establish a
truth commission because it observes due process guarantees and hence
it would violate human rights laws’ (Presidencia de la República 2000;
Garduño 2001). Second, the language of human rights was relevant
because, as I said before, it determined how crimes (e.g. genocide and
forced disappearance) and protagonists of the past (victims and perpe-
trators) were constructed in order to frame the investigations into
past crimes.
This book is the most comprehensive study to date of the country’s
efforts to come to terms with the past. Whilst the conclusions of this
book relate specifically to Mexico, they make important contributions to
some of the debates addressed by scholars on transitional justice, and give
reason to re-examine transitional justice processes in other countries in a
new light. It offers a comprehensive empirical snapshot of Mexico’s ‘tran-
sitional justice’ process. In joining more recent efforts to provide empiri-
cal evidence and to analyse the different factors that facilitated the
emergence of Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process, this work is based on
a detailed documentary analysis of private and public archives. The result
is a unique study of concrete examples and primary sources specifically
focused on the development of ‘transitional justice’ in Mexico, a contri-
bution that has only now been made possible.
Chapter Overview
In Chap. 2 I situate Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process in the broader
context of the country’s transition towards democracy. I describe the
PRI’s seventy-year authoritarian regime, the political transition which
began in 1968 and concluded with Vicente Fox’s victory in 2000, and the
human rights violations committed by the state throughout both periods.
Mexico was an auspicious scenario for the emergence of ‘transitional jus-
tice’, and I explain the reason for this.
In Chap. 3 I evaluate the relevant literature on transitional justice and
present my approach in relation to it. In Chap. 4 I demonstrate how the
process of ‘transitional justice’ emerged as an answer to the dilemma
faced by Fox’s government—whether to confront or bury the past—and
examine the phase in which ‘transitional justice’ was merely a possibility.
Thus, I explore the contingency of the events that led to the establish-
ment of the SPO as the key mechanism by which the past would be
examined.
In Chap. 5 I examine how categories of human rights violations (e.g.
forced disappearance) were constructed in such a way as actually to per-
petuate impunity. In doing so, I shed light on the important role per-
formed in this phase by the National Human Rights Commission
(NHRC). Although it was a tainted institution associated with the PRI
era, the NHRC defined the kind of human rights violations that would
qualify for investigation in the ‘transitional justice’ process.
In Chap. 6 I analyse the development and workings of the SPO and its
consequences for Mexico’s democratic transition. I examine how the
functioning of the SPO was affected by continuous political negotiations
between the different actors involved in the process, and how the SPO’s
prosecutorial strategies to do justice served to grant a de facto amnesty to
the perpetrators. Finally, Chap. 7 summarises the key findings and raises
a number of important issues which would benefit from further research.
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2
The Background: Authoritarianism
and Past Atrocity in Mexico
Introduction
This chapter situates Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process (2000–2006)
in the larger context of the country’s democratic transition. It renders an
account of the authoritarian regime (the PRI era) since it began its rule in
1929 for almost seventy years, the protracted process of political transi-
tion which began in 1968, and the human rights abuses perpetrated by
the state and its agents throughout both periods. Thus, this chapter out-
lines Mexico’s history of abuses in order to understand why the country
became a scenario for the emergence of ‘transitional justice’.
The conventional explanations of Mexico’s transition from authoritari-
anism to democracy have focused on the electoral reforms implemented
by the authoritarian regime since the 1970s (Alvarado 1987; Bazdresch,
et al. 1992; Dominguez and Lawson 2004; Dominguez and McCann
1996; Drake 1986; Harvey and Serrano 1994; Loaeza 1999; Merino
2003; Peschard 1994, 1995). These reforms gradually liberalised the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) regime and reached their ‘felici-
tous culmination in the 2000 presidential election’ with the triumph of
the National Action Party (PAN) and its candidate, Vicente Fox (Schedler
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21

J. Trevino-Rangel, Policing the Mexican Past, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after
Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94407-0_2
2005: 10). In their analysis of electoral reforms, these interpretations

highlight the continuous political negotiations between the elites in
power and the opposition parties’ elites (Loaeza 2000). In doing so, they
disregard that these reforms occurred in a context characterised by politi-
cal violence, and ignore the state’s brutal extermination of the regime’s
enemies before and during the transition. They consider that the guerra
sucia (dirty war)—in which hundreds of dissidents were assassinated and
‘disappeared’ during the 1970s and 1980s—was a ‘minor skirmishing
compared to the barbarities of the southern cone versions’ (Knight
1992: 100).
Let me make it clear that the idea of Mexico as an authoritarian regime
has not been entirely contested. What has been ignored or denied is the
systematic violation of human rights during the authoritarian regime and
its transitional period. The reasons why political violence was ignored—
until recently—by the literature on Mexico’s democratisation are anal-
ysed in detail later in this chapter. Let me, however, list briefly some of
them here: (a) local mass media was tightly controlled by the state; (b)
scholars and journalists were repressed or co-opted by the PRI elite; (c)
the PRI’s ideology concealed, discursively, the possibility of violent rule;
(d) the authoritarian regime successfully maintained a democratic facade
before the international community; and (e) other Latin American cases
(e.g. military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, or Brazil) were more
extreme and this is the horizon against which Mexico has been judged—
even by Mexican scholars.
The point is that according to most of the dominant accounts, it seems
as if Mexico experienced a ‘velvet’ transition, ‘smooth, soft, almost imper-
ceptible’ (Espino 2010: 127). However, if Mexico lived a non-violent
political transition from authoritarianism to democracy as these conven-
tional interpretations suggest, why did a ‘transitional justice’ process seem
so ‘necessary’ at the beginning of the democratic regime?
The assumptions that the authoritarian regime had a ‘peaceful devel-
opment’ and that the transition from authoritarianism to democracy
took place without violence have been recently questioned in empirical
studies that have shown that there were political violence, state crimes,
and mass atrocity during the transition (Aguayo 1998, 2001; Eisenstadt
2004; Ortega-Ortiz 2000). According to these investigations, if we do
2 The Background: Authoritarianism and Past Atrocity in Mexico 23
not take into account the existence of social movements and the occur-
rence of political violence during the transition, we cannot understand
why the authoritarian regime promoted electoral reforms with the alleged
aim of democratisation. In fact, almost all these reforms were the state’s
answer to violence (Ortega-Ortiz 2008). Additionally, according to these
studies, if we ignore state repression against the threats to the authoritar-
ian regime we cannot understand why it survived for seven decades
(Aguayo 1998). This chapter builds on this interpretation and offers new
empirical evidence that bolsters it. This is not to suggest that the chapter’s
objective is to confront opposing explanations of Mexico’s transition.
Neither is it to delve into theoretical studies on transitions to democracy,
political parties, or political systems. This chapter’s objectives are more
modest. First, it shows the basic characteristics that allow us to describe
the PRI regime as authoritarian. Second, it shows that the PRI era was
not free of social and political conflict, and explains how these became
neutralised by the state through a complex ‘repressive machine’. Third, it
shows that during the democratic transition the PRI regime intensified
the repression of dissidents, although at the same time it implemented
electoral reforms that made greater political plurality gradually possible.
Finally, it explores the reasons why state crimes, at one time ‘invisible’,
became visible—that is, Vicente Fox’s decision to ‘do something’ with the
past; new transparency laws and the disclosure of secret files; a more dem-
ocratic atmosphere that allowed scholars, activists, and victims’ families
to dig into the past without fearing adverse consequences (death threats,
repression, and imprisonment).
In sum, this chapter provides the background to an understanding of
why ‘transitional justice’ mechanisms—which sought to investigate and
punish past atrocity—came to be so relevant to the inauguration of the
new democratic regime.
he Mexican Authoritarian Regime

T
(1929–1968)
The Mexican authoritarian regime began in 1929 when the military elites
that won the bloody Mexican Revolution created a state party, the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which remained in power until
2000.1 In spite of being a heterogeneous group, for decades the PRI elite
managed to maintain a certain consensus on the general norms for the
competition for power, and shared the common objective of promoting
national economic growth and modernisation—that is, industrialisation,
‘depeasantization’ of the countryside (Aguilar Camín and Meyer 1993).
The result of these political agreements was a one-party regime, which
enjoyed power for seventy years with a relative political and social stabil-
ity that other Latin American countries envied (Knight 1992).
Mexico was socially stable because it did not suffer major social con-
flicts like those that affected the country during the Mexican Revolution
in the 1910s and 1920s, in which an estimated one million people died
(Aguilar Camín and Meyer 1993; Gilly 1983; Katz 1998; Knight 1986;
Womack 1970). The government also did not face a sustained guerrilla
insurgency for decades, as occurred in Peru with Sendero Luminoso or in
El Salvador with the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional
(FMLN) (Wickham-Crowley 1992). The indigenous communities that
had not yet undergone an ‘acculturation’ process were relatively ignored
in practice—although not in the official discourse—by the ‘revolution-
ary’ governments, but they were not subjected to explicit genocidal poli-
cies as had been the case elsewhere in the Americas (Falcón 1999; Knight
1990, 1994).2 That is, PRI governments, whose attitudes towards
1
The PRI was founded in 1929 as the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) with the purpose of
unifying within this institution the different revolutionary elites that had triumphed in the Mexican
Revolution in the 1910s and 1920s. Hence, from 1928 to 1934, the General Plutarco Elías Calles
was able to control political life in Mexico, achieving political stability and ending the rivalry
between different political groups. In 1938, the PNR was restructured as the Mexican Revolutionary
Party (PRM). The change implied the transformation of the official party into one of the masses
refounded on four sectors: agrarian, worker, military, and popular. In 1946, after a new process of
reorganisation, the PRM was renamed the PRI.
2
By ‘acculturation’ I refer to the process of cultural modification of Mexico’s indigenous population
as a result of its contact with the Spanish population living in Mexico.
indigenous people fluctuated between indifference and p aternalism, did

not perpetrate a systematic ethnocide like the one that occurred, for
instance, in Guatemala.
Mexico was politically stable between 1929 and 2000 because there
were no abrupt regime changes like those that occurred in the rest of
Latin America. Whilst South American countries like Argentina, Uruguay,
Brazil, and Chile experienced the drastic rise of military dictatorships—
sometimes, on more than one occasion—the Mexican military
remained—formally—in their headquarters during this period. The last
military insurrection in Mexico took place in 1929, and since 1940 the
political participation of the military has been officially limited to certain
public offices (e.g. the Ministry of Defence). Since 1940 Mexico has had
a series of civilian governments, elected periodically according to existing
electoral legislation and the Constitution (Ai Camp 1992).
This relative political and social stability in Mexico allowed the PRI
regime to maintain an appearance of ‘democratic normality’ for decades.
The democratic façade of the PRI regime was consistent with the stipula-
tion in the Constitution since 1917 that Mexico was a federal republic
with a democratic, plural, and representative government (Loaeza 2008a:
45). So, why might we question this appearance of democratic normality?
The problem with this formal definition in the Constitution—of
Mexico being a federal republic with a democratic, plural, and representa-
tive government—was that it was very far from reality. Far from seeming
an Occidental democracy, in fact Mexico resembled more the authoritar-
ian model of limited pluralism and non-participation set forth by Juan
J. Linz in his analysis of the Francoist dictatorship (Linz 1975). The
appearance of democracy contrasted with the authoritarian praxis of an
executive power whose actions overcame the attributions conferred by the
established legal order (Carpizo 1998). The notion of a pluralist and rep-
resentative state apparatus was in sharp contrast with the factual presence
of both a hegemonic political party (the PRI) and a security apparatus
(police, secret police, military, and paramilitary groups), which de facto
created an adverse environment for independent participation (Aguayo
1998). Hence, since the 1970s, academic writers, some segments of the
country’s population, and international human rights organisations, have
explicitly considered Mexico to be an authoritarian regime.3 This charac-

terisation is based on the active intervention of the Mexican state to (a)
limit social and political pluralism, (b) control or repress political mobili-
sations, and (c) articulate political and social demands (Middlebrook
1986: 124; Molinar 1993).4
Limited Political Pluralism
The state successfully limited political pluralism because the PRI, the offi-
cial party, enjoyed organisational and resource superiority, which margin-
alised other political organisations. The 1917 Constitution had included
universal voting rights and legally recognised the existence of opposition
political parties, but this was not enough to establish the foundations of
a liberal democracy (Loaeza 1999: 53–60). Introducing the universal
vote was merely a symbolic move because, in fact, voters did not have the
option of choosing between different political parties (Loaeza 1999:
60–66). Even though elections to compete for political office took place
regularly, electoral campaigns were a mere formality; electoral processes
lacked content because presidential candidates of the official party did
not have any significant opponents between 1952 and 1988 (Lindau
1992). Until the end of the 1980s, the legally recognised opposition par-
ties did not provide a real alternative, nor did they jeopardise the PRI’s
hegemony (Meyer 1977: 10).
Even with the presence of opposition parties, which gradually acquired
a more relevant role in the 1980s, the absence of free and reliable electoral
3
Of course, this classification was never accepted by the PRI regime, which carefully sought to
maintain a democratic façade before the international community. I will go back to this point later
in this chapter.
4
Before the 1970s, disagreement prevailed among scholars over the appropriate classification of
Mexico’s political system. In 1969 Carolyn and Martin Needleman charted differing interpreta-
tions about Mexico’s system: it was labelled as being ‘imperfectly democratic’ or ‘in transition to
democracy’. For instance, Juan Linz recognised Mexico as one of the ‘rare cases’ in which ‘a non-
traditional regime’ has been ‘transformed into a democracy without constitutional discontinuity
and the use of force to remove the incumbent’. However, Linz called into question those authors
who ‘want to classify it [Mexico] as a democracy’ (Linz 1975: 185). In 1973 Susan Kaufman Purcell
(1973: 29) ‘demonstrate[d] the utility of classifying’ the Mexican regime ‘as authoritarian’. Since
then, there has been a general consensus on the authoritarian nature of the Mexican political
regime (Meyer 1977; Molinar 1993).
processes predictably ended in the triumph of PRI candidates (Aguayo

2010b: Chap. 2; Meyer 1977: 11). The executive power defined the
number of parties that could contend through the electoral norms,
diverted public resources in order to support the official candidate,
directed the institution in charge of elections, and controlled the electoral
results. Krauze points to the different ways in which the government
orchestrated fraud in each election:
The methods […] encompassed all stages of the electoral process […].
Months before [the election], a rigged and selective electoral list is organ-
ised: all those suspected of favouring the opposition are removed from this
list and members of the PRI are privileged […]. All bureaucrats and most
areas of the corporatist workers’ and peasants’ organisations receive instruc-
tions to vote massively for the official candidate, or to risk (the ‘stick’) their
posts, jobs or lands respectively, or with the promise (the ‘carrot’) of increas-
ing them. Many times these votes are placed days before or after the elec-
tion as a ‘filling’, in separate ballot boxes that are brought in for the final
counting. Big buses bring peasants from remote places to vote with their
ballot papers already filled out in favour of the PRI. (1996: 117)
During the PRI’s rule, elections took place regularly and according to
the law, but in effect simply endorsed decisions made beforehand—that
is, the outgoing President designated his successor, who was then for-
mally nominated by the PRI, and then legitimised through the electoral
process. Until 1989, there was not a single opposition governor in any
state of the Mexican Republic. The universal vote and opposition parties
were legal, but the struggle for power was resolved de facto between the
official party’s elites (Ai Camp 1984; Hernández 1985; Smith 1979).5
The opposition was tolerated only within the Lower House ‘where it was
kept as a minority that legitimised the democratic forms without the abil-
ity to really influence the behaviour of the legislative body’ (Meyer 1980:
5
The PRI was a stage for competition between the elites. Hence, at least until the mid-1980s, the
challenges to the PRI’s official presidential candidate came from within the party itself. Even so, on
only two occasions did PRI official candidates find significant opposition within the party: first,
against the Almazán movement in 1940; later in 1952 with the Henriquista movement. Both the
Almazán and the Henriquista movements were defeated (Lindau 1992).
121). Elections served as propaganda for the authoritarian regime’s activi-

ties and achievements.
Political Demobilisation
The PRI governments also successfully promoted political and social

demobilisation. The state controlled mass participation through worker
and peasant unions and headquarters, which since 1938 had been
‘absorbed’ by the official party (Loaeza 2008b: 28). Certainly, the inclu-
sion of these vast social groups—workers and peasants—within the ‘revo-
lutionary’ party provided an important source of political legitimacy for
the authoritarian regime, for it was simultaneously ‘both elite dominated
and mass based’ (Middlebrook 1986: 125). By incorporating worker
unions and peasant organisations into the PRI, the state was able to regu-
late their social demands and constrain their political participation
(Meyer 1980: 143). For instance, labour leaders could not form a union
or hold a strike without the approval of the state; the PRI had also the
discretionary authority to manipulate union elections and to influence
the outcome of disputes regarding a union’s title to a collective contract.
So, by being incorporated to the official party, unions constructed formal
and exclusive linkages with the PRI that generated leadership privileges
(e.g. party posts), but also raised the costs of challenging the party’s
authority. Additionally, the state control of workers and peasants through
unions subordinated to the official party had a demobilisational conse-
quence: as the majority of these groups had been encompassed by the
PRI, opposition leaders had little chance of mobilising mass groups
against the regime.
Another factor that contributed to political and social demobilisation
was the legal neutralisation of those dissatisfied within unions. In spite of
the unions’ diversity, their leaders were ‘united in their opposition to
worker dissent’ (Middlebrook 1991: 282). In order to facilitate the con-
trol of dissidents, unions employed the ‘exclusion clause’. This clause,
included in all labour contracts, legally urged employers to fire any worker
who had been previously expelled from the union. The clause was a pow-
erful dissuasion tool: the price of dissidence was unemployment. It gave
union leaders and employers an efficient legal resource to exterminate

dissatisfied workers arbitrarily.
The Centralisation of Power
Electoral processes characterised because the official party did not have
significant opponents, and political demobilisation facilitated the cen-
tralisation of power in the presidency. The effect of this striking concen-
tration of power was the emergence of a dominant presidency characterised
by the discretional use of its attributions (e.g. law, resources), since it was
not accountable for any of its actions to any institution (Meyer 1980:
136). The vast power of the President, legally established in the
Constitution, was reinforced by the power granted by being the leader of
the government party, which was in fact a state party (Carpizo 1998;
Casar 1996; Cosío Villegas 1972). Hence, the President was able to limit
the legislative and judicial powers as well as those of local governments.
From 1940 onwards, the presidency was a central element of the
Mexican political system. The President had enough power to restrict the
participation of the rest of the political forces and control political events
(Flores Olea 1976; Reyna 1976). All presidents removed, arbitrarily,
those state governors who, for any reason whatsoever, they considered
uncomfortable or threatening (Hernández 2005: 104). Additionally, as I
explain later in this chapter, the centralisation of power allowed the exec-
utive to manipulate mass media, censor intellectual critics, co-opt dissi-
dents, use public funds for private ends, and repress threats to the regime.
The President and his party were indifferent to public opinion, which had
no real means to make them accountable, as democratic systems of power
require (Loaeza 2008a: 52).
Oppressing and Repressing Threats to the PRI Regime
In 1990, prominent Mexican intellectuals, Octavio Paz and Enrique

Krauze, organised a meeting of international intellectuals in Mexico City.
Among the participants to the event were Cornelius Castoriadis, Daniel
Bell, Michael Ignatieff, Hugh Thomas, Czesław Miłosz, Adam Michnik,

and Carlos Monsiváis (Paz and Krauze 1991; Vargas Llosa 1991, 1992).
These distinguished intellectuals gathered to reflect on ‘the experience of
freedom’ in a country whose regime was seen as authoritarian by academ-
ics at the time.6 The event was significant since it occurred in the context
of the abrupt democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, which at the time
surprised the world (Dominguez Michael 2009). To the amazement of
those gathered, Mario Vargas Llosa referred to Mexico as the ‘perfect dic-
tatorship’. For Vargas Llosa ‘the perfect dictatorship is not communism.
It is not the USSR. It is not Fidel Castro. The perfect dictatorship is
Mexico […] it is the camouflaged dictatorship.’ ‘The Mexican is [such] a
dictatorship’, he concluded, ‘that all Latin American dictatorships since I
can recall have tried to create something equivalent to the PRI’ (Vargas
Llosa 1991).
In describing the Mexican political regime as ‘a sui generis dictator-
ship’, Vargas Llosa (1991) referred mainly to its ‘permanence, not of a
man, but of a party. And a party which is immovable.’ The prolonged
permanence of the regime, as I mentioned before, was the result of the
active intervention of the Mexican state to limit social and political plu-
ralism, demobilise groups not part of the government, and articulate
political demands through the official party. However, this does not mean
that the PRI governments were free of social or political conflict (Ortega-
Ortiz 2008; Rodríguez Munguía 2007). On the contrary, the regime
faced multiple challenges between 1929 and 2000. When the bureau-
cratic mechanisms of social and political control failed, the ‘revolution-
ary’ state repressed and suppressed any form of politically independent
participation (Aguayo 2001, 2009; Rodríguez Munguía 2006, 2008;
Stevens 1970).
In order to keep opposition parties, independent movements, or anti-
government groups at bay, the regime combined, successfully, negotia-
tion with co-option, intimidation, repression, oppression, and
censorship—what Sergio Aguayo calls ‘the Mexican style of the use of
6
Another remarkable thing about some of these intellectuals is that they were also involved in the
broader ‘justice in transition’ debates that dominated the post-89 wave of transitions in Eastern
Europe, and those transitions from military rule in Latin America—Ignatieff and Michnik, for
instance. Monsivais was involved in Mexico’s transitional process.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“Then a careful study of the diary brought into view another very
impressive fact. There were considerable fluctuations in Stella’s
condition. Sometimes she appeared to be so far improving as to lead
you to some hopes of her actual recovery. Then there would be a
rather sudden change for the worse and she would lose more than
she had gained. Now, at this time Barbara had already become
connected with the political movement which periodically called her
away from home for periods varying from one to four weeks; and
when I drew up a table of the dates of her departures and returns, I
found that the periods included between them—that is the periods
during which she was absent from home—coincided most singularly
with Stella’s relapses. The coincidence was so complete that, when I
had set the data out in a pair of diagrams in the form of graphs, the
resemblance of the two diagrams was most striking. I will show you
the diagrams presently.
“But there was something else that I was on the lookout for in the
diary, but it was only quite near the end that I found it. Quite early, I
learned that Stella was accustomed to read and work at night by the
light of a candle. But I could not discover what sort of candle she
used; whether it was an ordinary household candle or one of some
special kind. At last I came on the entry in which you describe the
making of the wax mould; and then I had the information that I had
been looking for. In that entry you mention that you began by lifting
the reflector off the candle, by which I learned that the receptacle
used was not an ordinary candlestick. Then you remark that the
candle was of ‘good hard wax’; by which I learned that it was not an
ordinary household candle—these being usually composed of a
rather soft paraffin wax. Apparently, it was a stearine candle such as
is made for use in candle-lamps.”
“But,” I expostulated, “how could it possibly matter what sort of
candle she used? The point seems to be quite irrelevant.”
“The point,” he replied, “was not only relevant; it was of crucial
importance. But I had better explain. When I was considering the
circumstances surrounding the poisoning of Monkhouse, I decided
that the probabilities pointed to Barbara as the poisoner. But she was
a hundred miles away when the poisoning occurred; hence the
question that I asked myself was this: Was there any method that
was possible and practicable in the existing circumstances by which
Barbara could have arranged that the poisoning could be effected
during her absence? And the answer was that there was such a
method, but only one. The food and the medicine were prepared and
administered by those who were on the spot. But the candles were
supplied by Barbara and by her put into the bedside candle-box
before she went away. And they would operate during her absence.”
“But,” I exclaimed, “do I understand you to suggest that it is
possible to administer poison by means of a candle?”
“Certainly,” he replied. “It is quite possible and quite practicable. If
a candle is charged with finely powdered arsenious acid—‘white
arsenic’—when that candle is burnt, the arsenious acid will be partly
vaporized and partly converted into arsine, or arseniureted
hydrogen. Most of the arsine will be burnt in the flame and
reconverted into arsenious acid, which will float in the air, as it
condenses, in the form of an almost invisible white cloud. The actual
result will be that the air in the neighbourhood of the candle will
contain small traces of arsine—which is an intensely poisonous gas
—and considerable quantities of arsenious acid, floating about in the
form of infinitely minute crystals. This impalpable dust will be
breathed into the lungs of any person near the candle and will settle
on the skin, from which it will be readily absorbed into the blood and
produce all the poisonous effects of arsenic.
“Now, in the case of Harold Monkhouse, not only was there a
special kind of candle, supplied by the suspected person, but, as I
have told you, the symptoms during life and the appearances of the
dead body, all seemed to me to point to some method of poisoning
through the lungs and skin rather than by way of the stomach, and
also suggested a mixed poisoning in which arsine played some part.
So that the candle was not only a possible medium of the poisoning;
it was by far the most probable.
“Hence, when I came to consider Stella’s illness and noted the
strong suggestion of arsenic poisoning; and when I noted the
parallelism of her illness with that of Monkhouse; I naturally kept a
watchful eye for a possible parallelism in the method of administering
the poison. And not only did I find that parallelism; but in that very
entry, I found strong confirmation of my suspicion that the candle
was poisoned. You will remember that you mention the circumstance
that on the night following the making of the wax mould you were
quite seriously unwell. Apparently you were suffering from a slight
attack of acute arsenical poisoning, due to your having inhaled some
of the fumes from the burning candle.”
“Yes, I remember that,” said I. “But what is puzzling me is how the
candles could have been obtained. Surely it is not possible to buy
arsenical candles?”
“No,” he replied, “it is not. But it is possible to buy a candle-
mould, with which it is quite easy to make them. Remember that, not
so very long ago, most country people used to make their own
candles, and the hinged moulds that they used are still by no means
rare. You will find specimens in most local museums and in curio
shops in country towns and you can often pick them up in farm-
house sales. And if you have a candle-mould, the making of
arsenical candles is quite a simple affair. Barbara, as we know, used
to buy a particular German brand of stearine candles. All that she
had to do was to melt the candles, put the separated wicks into the
mould, stir some finely-powdered white arsenic into the melted wax
and pour it into the mould. When the wax was cool, the mould would
be opened and the candles taken out—these hinged moulds usually
made about six candles at a time. Then it would be necessary to
scrape off the seam left by the mould and smooth the candles to
make them look like those sold in the shops.”
“It was a most diabolically ingenious scheme,” said I.
“It was,” he agreed. “The whole villainous plan was very
completely conceived and most efficiently carried out. But to return
to our argument. The discovery that Stella had used a special form
of candle left me in very little doubt that Barbara was the poisoner
and that poisoned candles had been the medium used in both
crimes. For we were now out of the region of mere hypothesis. We
were dealing with genuine circumstantial evidence. But that evidence
was still much too largely inferential to serve as the material for a
prosecution. We still needed some facts of a definite and tangible
kind; and as soon as you came back from your travels on the South-
Eastern Circuit, fresh facts began to accumulate. Passing over the
proceedings of Wallingford and his follower and the infernal machine
—all of which were encouraging, as offering corroboration, but of no
immediate assistance—the first really important accretion of
evidence occurred in connection with our visit to the empty house in
Hilborough Square.”
“Ha!” I exclaimed. “Then you did find something significant, in
spite of your pessimistic tone at the time? I may say, Thorndyke, that
I had a feeling that you went to that house with the definite
expectation of finding some specific thing. Was I wrong?”
“No. You were quite right. I went there with the expectation of
finding one thing and a faint hope of finding another; and both the
expectation and the hope were justified by the event. My main
purpose in that expedition was to obtain samples of the wall-paper
from Monkhouse’s room, but I thought it just possible that the soot
from the bedroom chimneys might yield some information. And it did.
“To begin with the wall-paper: the condition of the room made it
easy to secure specimens. I tore off about a dozen pieces and wrote
a number on each, to correspond with numbers that I marked on a
rough sketch-plan of the room which I drew first. My expectation was
that if—as I believed—arsenical candles had been burnt in that
room, arsenic would have been deposited on all the walls, but in
varying amounts, proportionate to the distance of the wall from the
candle. The loose piece of paper on the wall by the bed was, of
course, the real touchstone of the case, for if there were no arsenic
in it, the theory of the arsenical candle would hardly be tenable. I
therefore took the extra precaution of writing a full description of its
position on the back of the piece and deposited it for greater safety
in my letter-case.
“As soon as I reached home that day I spread out the torn
fragment on the wide stage of a culture microscope and examined its
outer surface with a strong top light. And the very first glance settled
the question. The whole surface was spangled over with minute
crystals, many of them hardly a ten-thousandth of an inch in
diameter, sparkling in the strong light like diamonds and perfectly
unmistakable; the characteristic octahedral crystals of arsenious
acid.
“But distinctive as they were, I took nothing for granted. Snipping
off a good-sized piece of the paper, I submitted it to the Marsh-
Berzelius test and got a very pronounced ‘arsenical mirror,’ which put
the matter beyond any possible doubt or question. I may add that I
tested all the other pieces and got an arsenic reaction from them all,
varying, roughly, according to their distance from the table on which
the candle stood.
“Thus the existence of the arsenical candle was no longer a
matter of hypothesis or even of mere probability; it was virtually a
demonstrated fact. The next question was, who put the arsenic into
the candle? All the evidence, such as it was, pointed to Barbara. But
there was not enough of it. No single fact connected her quite
definitely with the candles, and it had to be admitted that they had
passed through other hands than hers and that the candle-box was
accessible to several people, especially during her absence. Clear
evidence, then, was required to associate her—or some one else—
with those poisoned candles, and I had just a faint hope that such
evidence might be forthcoming. This was how I reasoned:
“Here was a case of poisoning in which the poison was self-
administered and the actual poisoner was absent. Consequently it
was impossible to give a calculated dose on a given occasion, nor
was it possible to estimate in advance the amount that would be
necessary to produce the desired result. Since the poison was to be
left within reach of the victim, to be taken from time to time, it would
be necessary to leave a quantity considerably in excess of the
amount actually required to produce death on any one occasion. It is
probable that all the candles in the box were poisoned. In any case,
most of them must have been; and as the box was filled to last for
the whole intended time of Barbara’s absence, there would be a
remainder of poisoned candles in the box when Monkhouse died.
But the incident of the ‘faked’ medicine showed that the poisoner
was fully alive to the possibility of an examination of the room. It was
not likely that so cautious a criminal would leave such damning
evidence as the arsenical candles in full view. For if, by chance, one
of them had been lighted and the bearer had developed symptoms
of poisoning, the murder would almost certainly have been out. In
any case, we could assume that the poisoner would remove them
and destroy them after putting ordinary candles in their place.
“But a candle is not a very easy thing to destroy. You can’t throw
it down a sink, or smash it up and cast it into the rubbish-bin. It must
be burnt; and owing to its inflammability, it must be burnt carefully
and rather slowly; and if it contains a big charge of arsenic, the
operator must take considerable precautions. And finally, these
particular candles had to be burnt secretly.
“Having regard to these considerations, I decided that the only
safe and practicable way to get rid of them was to burn them in a
fireplace with the window wide open. This would have to be done at
night when all the household was asleep, so as to be safe from
interruption and discovery; and a screen would have to be put before
the fireplace to prevent the glare from being visible through the open
window. If there were a fire in the grate, so much the better. The
candles could be cut up into small pieces and thrown into the fire
one at a time.
“Of course the whole matter was speculative. There might have
been no surplus candles, or if there were, they might have been
taken out of the house and disposed of in some other way. But one
could only act on the obvious probabilities and examine the
chimneys, remembering that whereas a negative result would prove
nothing for or against any particular person, a positive result would
furnish very weighty evidence. Accordingly I collected samples of
soot from the various bedroom chimneys and from that of Barbara’s
boudoir, labelling each of them with the aid of the cards which you
had left in the respective rooms.
“The results were, I think, quite conclusive. When I submitted the
samples to analysis I found them all practically free from arsenic—
disregarding the minute traces that one expects to find in ordinary
soot—with one exception. The soot from Barbara’s bedroom
chimney yielded, not mere traces, but an easily measurable quantity
—much too large to have been attributable to the coal burnt in the
grate.
“Thus, you see, so far as the murder of Monkhouse was
concerned, there was a fairly conclusive case against Barbara. It left
not a shadow of doubt in my mind that she was the guilty person. But
you will also see that it was not a satisfactory case to take into court.
The whole of the evidence was scientific and might have appeared
rather unconvincing to the ordinary juryman, though it would have
been convincing enough to the judge. I debated with myself whether
I should communicate my discoveries to the police and leave them to
decide for or against a prosecution, or whether I should keep silence
and seek for further evidence. And finally I decided, for the present,
to keep my own counsel. You will understand why.”
“Yes,” said I. “You suspected that Stella, too, had been poisoned.”
“Exactly. I had very little doubt of it. And you notice that in this
case there was available evidence of a kind that would be quite
convincing to a jury—evidence obtainable from an examination of
the victim’s body. But here again I was disposed to adopt a waiting
policy for three reasons. First, I should have liked to avoid the
exhumation if possible. Second, if the exhumation were unavoidable,
I was unwilling to apply for it until I was certain that arsenic would be
found in the body; and third, although the proof that Stella had been
poisoned would have strengthened the case enormously against
Barbara, it would yet have added nothing to the evidence that a
poisoned candle had been used.
“But the proof of the poisoned candle was the kernel of the case
against Barbara. If I could prove that Stella had been poisoned by
means of a candle, that would render the evidence absolutely
irresistible. This I was not at present able to do. But I had some slight
hopes that the deficiency might be made up; that some new facts
might come into view if I waited. And, as there was nothing that
called for immediate action, I decided to wait, and in due course, the
deficiency was made up and the new facts did come into view.”
As he paused, I picked up Stella’s medallion and looked at it with
a new and sombre interest. Holding it up before him, I said:
“I am assuming, Thorndyke, that the new facts were in some way
connected with this. Am I right?”
“Yes,” he replied, “you are entirely right. The connection between
that charming little work and the evidence that sent that monster of
wickedness to her death is one of the strangest and most impressive
circumstances that has become known to me in the whole of my
experience. It is no exaggeration to say that when you and Stella
were working on that medallion, you were forging the last link in the
chain of evidence that could have dragged the murdress to the
gallows.”
He paused, and, having replenished my glass, took the medallion
in his hand and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he knocked out and
refilled his pipe and I waited expectantly for the completion of this
singular story.
Chapter XVIII.
The Final Proof
“We now,” Thorndyke resumed, “enter the final stage of the
inquiry. Hitherto we have dealt with purely scientific evidence which
would have had to be communicated to the jury and which they
would have had to take on trust with no convincing help from their
own eyes. We had evidence, conclusive to ourselves, that
Monkhouse had been murdered by means of a poisoned candle. But
we could not produce the candle or any part of it. We had nothing
visible or tangible to show to the jury to give them the feeling of
confidence and firm conviction which they rightly demand when they
have to decide an issue involving the life or death of the accused. It
was this something that could be seen and handled that I sought,
and sought in vain until that momentous evening when I called at
your chambers to return your diary.
“I remember that as I entered the room and cast my eyes over
the things that were spread out on the table, I received quite a
shock. For the first glance showed me that, amongst those things
were two objects that exactly fulfilled the conditions of the final test.
There was the wax mould—a part, and the greater part, of one of the
suspected candles; and there was the tress of hair—a portion of the
body of the person suspected to have been poisoned. With these
two objects it was possible to determine with absolute certainty
whether that person had or had not been poisoned with arsenic, and
if she had, whether the candle had or had not been the medium by
which the poison was administered.”
“But,” I said, “you knew from the diary of the existence of the wax
mould.”
“I knew that it had existed. But I naturally supposed that the cast
had been taken and the mould destroyed years ago, though I had
intended to ask you about it. However, here it was, miraculously
preserved, against all probabilities, still awaiting completion. Of
course, I recognized it instantly, and began to cast about in my mind
for some means of making the necessary examination without
disclosing my suspicions. For you will realize that I was unwilling to
say anything to you about Stella’s death until the question was
settled one way or the other. If the examination had shown no
arsenic either in the candle or in the hair, it would not have been
necessary to say anything to you at all.
“But while I was debating the matter, the problem solved itself. As
soon as I came to look at Stella’s unfinished works, I saw that they
cried aloud to be completed and that Polton was the proper person
to carry out the work. I made the suggestion, which I should have
made in any case, and when you adopted it, I decided to say nothing
but to apply the tests when the opportunity offered.”
“I am glad,” said I, “to hear you say that you would have made
the suggestion in any case. It looked at first like a rather cold-
blooded pretext to get possession of the things. But you were
speaking of the hair. Can you depend on finding recognizable traces
of arsenic in the hair of a person who has been poisoned?”
“Certainly, you can,” he replied. “The position is this: When
arsenic is taken it becomes diffused throughout the whole body,
including the blood, the bones and the skin. But as soon as a dose of
arsenic is taken, the poison begins to be eliminated from the body,
and, if no further dose is taken, the whole of the poison is thrown off
in a comparatively short time until none remains in the tissues—with
one exception. That exception is the epidermis, or outer skin, with its
appendages—the finger and toe nails and the hair. These structures
differ from all others in that, instead of growing interstitially and being
alive throughout, they grow at a certain growing-point and then
become practically dead structures. Thus a hair grows at the
growing-point where the bulb joins the true skin. Each day a new
piece of hair is produced at the living root, but when once it has
come into being it grows no more, but is simply pushed up from
below by the next portion. Thenceforward it undergoes no change,
excepting that it gradually moves upwards as new portions are
added at the root. It is virtually a dead, unchanging structure.
“Now suppose a person to take a considerable dose of arsenic.
That arsenic becomes diffused throughout all the living tissues and is
for a time deposited in them. The growing point of the hair is a living
tissue and of course the arsenic becomes deposited in it. Then the
process of elimination begins and the arsenic is gradually removed
from the living tissues. But in twenty-four hours, what was the
growing-point of the hair has been pushed up about the fiftieth of an
inch and is no longer a growing structure. It is losing its vitality. And
as it ceases to be a living tissue it ceases to be affected by the
process of elimination. Hence the arsenic which was deposited in it
when it was a living tissue is never removed. It remains as a
permanent constituent of that part of the hair, slowly moving up as
the hair grows from below, until at last it is snipped off by the barber;
or, if the owner is a long-haired woman, it continues to creep along
until the hair is full-grown and drops out.”
“Then the arsenic remains always in the same spot?”
“Yes. It is a local deposit at a particular point in the hair. And this,
Mayfield, is a most important fact, as you will see presently. For
observe what follows. Hair grows at a uniform rate—roughly, a fiftieth
of an inch in twenty-four hours. It is consequently possible, by
measurement, to fix nearly exactly, the age of any given point on a
hair. Thus if we have a complete hair and we find at any point in it a
deposit of arsenic, by measuring from that point to the root we can
fix, within quite narrow limits, the date on which that dose of arsenic
was taken.”
“But is it possible to do this?” I asked.
“Not in the case of a single hair,” he replied. “But in the case of a
tress, in which all the hairs are of the same age, it is perfectly
possible. You will see the important bearing of this presently.
“To return now to my investigation. I had the bulk of a candle and
a tress of Stella’s hair. The questions to be settled were, 1. Was
there arsenic in the candle? and 2. Had Stella been poisoned with
arsenic? I began by trimming the wax mould in readiness for casting
and then I made an analysis of the trimmings. The result was the
discovery of considerable quantities of arsenic in the wax.
“That answered the first question. Next, as the tress of hair was
larger than was required for your purpose, I ventured to sacrifice a
portion of it for a preliminary test. That test also gave a positive
result. The quantity of arsenic was, of course, very minute, but still it
was measurable by the delicate methods that are possible in dealing
with arsenic; and the amount that I found pointed either to one large
dose or to repeated smaller ones.
“The two questions were now answered definitely. It was certain
—and the certainty could be demonstrated to a jury—that Stella had
been poisoned by arsenic, and that the arsenic had been
administered by means of poisoned candles. The complete proof in
this case lent added weight to the less complete proof in the case of
Monkhouse; and the two cases served to corroborate one another in
pointing to Barbara as the poisoner. For she was the common factor
in the two cases. The other persons—Wallingford, Madeline and the
others—who appeared in the Monkhouse case, made no
appearance in the case of Stella; and the persons who were
associated with Stella were not associated with Monkhouse. But
Barbara was associated with both. And her absence from home was
no answer to the charge if death was caused by the candles which
she had admittedly supplied.
“But complete as the proof was, I wished, if possible, to make it
yet more complete: to associate Barbara still more definitely with the
crime. In the case of Monkhouse, it was clear that the poisoning
always occurred when she was absent from home. But this was not
so clear in the case of Stella. Your diary showed that Stella’s
relapses coincided pretty regularly with Barbara’s absences; but it
was not certain (though obviously probable) that the relapses
coincided with the periods of poisoning. If it could be proved that
they did coincide, that proof would furnish corroboration of the
greatest possible weight. It would show that the two cases were
parallel in all respects.
“But could it be proved? If the tress of Stella’s hair had been at
my disposal, I had no doubt that I could have decided the question.
But the tress was yours, and it had to be preserved. Whatever was
to be done must be done without destroying or injuring the hair, and I
set myself the task of finding some practicable method. Eventually, I
decided, without much hope of success, to try the X-rays. As arsenic
is a fairly dense metal and the quantity of it in the deposits quite
considerable, it seemed to me possible that it might increase the
density of the hairs at those points sufficiently to affect the X-ray
shadow. At any rate, I decided to give the method a trial.
“Accordingly, Polton and I set to work at it. First, in order to get
the densest shadow possible, we made the tress up into a close
cylinder, carefully arranging it so that all the cut ends were in exactly
the same plane. Then we made a number of graduated exposures
on ‘process’ plates, developing and intensifying with the object of
getting the greatest possible degree of contrast. The result was
unexpectedly successful. In the best negative, the shape of the tress
was faintly visible and was soon to be crossed by a number of
perfectly distinct pale bands. Those bands were the shadows of the
deposits of arsenic. There could be no doubt on the subject. For,
apart from the fact that there was nothing else that they could be,
their appearance agreed exactly with what one would have
expected. Each band presented a sharp, distinct edge towards the
tips of the hairs and faded away imperceptibly towards the roots. The
sharp edge corresponded to the sudden appearance of arsenic in
the blood when the poisoning began. The gradual fading away
corresponded to the period of elimination when the poisoning had
ceased and the quantity of arsenic in the blood was becoming less
and less from day to day.
“Now, since hair grows at a known, uniform rate, it was possible
to convert the distances between these arsenical bands into periods
of time; not with perfect exactness, because the rate of growth varies
slightly in different persons, but with sufficient exactness for our
present purpose. As soon as I looked at those bands, I saw that they
told the whole story. But let us follow the method of proof.
“Assuming the rate of growth to be one fiftieth of an inch in
twenty-four hours—which was probably correct for a person of
Stella’s age—I measured off on the photograph seven inches and a
quarter from the cut ends as representing the last year of her life. Of
course, I did not know how close to the head the hair had been cut,
but, judging by the bands, I assumed that it had been cut quite close
to the skin—within a quarter of an inch.”
“I happen to know that you were quite right,” said I, “but I can’t
imagine how you arrived at your conclusion.”
“It was quite a simple inference,” he replied, “as you will see,
presently. But to return to the photograph. Of the measured space of
seven inches and a quarter I took a tracing on sheet celluloid,
marking the sharp edges of the bands, the points at which the fading
began and the points at which the band ceased to be visible. This
tracing I transferred to paper ruled in tenths of an inch—a tenth of an
inch representing five days—and I joined the points where the fading
began and ended by a sloping line. I now had a diagram, or chart,
which showed, with something approaching to accuracy, the duration
of each administration of arsenic and the time which elapsed
between the successive poisonings. This is the chart. The sloping
lines show the fading of the bands.”
He handed me a paper which he had just taken from a drawer
and I looked at it curiously but with no great interest. As I returned it
after a brief inspection I remarked:
“It is quite clear and intelligible, but I don’t quite see why you took
the considerable trouble of making it. Does it show anything that
could not be stated in a few words?”
“Not by itself,” he replied. “But you remember that I mentioned
having made two other charts, one showing the fluctuations in
Stella’s illness and the other showing Barbara’s absences from home
during the same period. Here are those other two charts; and now, if
you put the three together, your eye can take in at a glance a fact of
fundamental importance; which is that the relapses, the absences
and the poisonings all coincided in time. The periodicity is strikingly
irregular; but it is identical in all three charts. I made these to hand to
the jury, and I think they would have been quite convincing, since
any juryman could check them by the dates given in evidence, and
by inspection of the radiograph of the hair.”
Explanation of the Charts
Chart A shows the fluctuations in the illness of Stella Keene during the
year preceding her death in October. Divided into intervals of five
days.
Chart B shows the distribution of the arsenical bands in Stella Keene’s
hair. The steep sides of the curves, towards the tips of the hairs,
show the sudden appearance of the deposit, and the sloping sides,
towards the roots of the hairs, represent its more gradual fading.
Each of the narrow divisions represents five days’ growth.
Chart C shows the periods during which Barbara was absent from
home, each absence being represented by a black column. Divided
into intervals of five days.
I gazed at the three charts and was profoundly impressed by the

convincing way in which they demonstrated the connection between
Barbara’s movements and the results of her diabolical activities. But
what impressed me still more was the amazing ingenuity with which
Thorndyke had contrived to build up a case of the most deadly
precision and completeness out of what seemed, even to my trained
intelligence, no more than a few chance facts, apparently quite trivial
and irrelevant.
“It seems,” I said, “that, so far as you were concerned, the
exhumation was really unnecessary.”
“Quite,” he replied. “It proved nothing that was not already
certain. Still, the Commissioner was quite right. For the purposes of
a trial, evidence obtained from the actual body of the victim is of
immeasurably more weight than indirect scientific evidence, no
matter how complete. An ordinary juryman might have difficulty in
realizing that the hair is part of the body and that proof of arsenical
deposit in the hair is proof of arsenic in the body. But the mistake
that he made, as events turned out, was in refusing to make the
arrest until my statements had been confirmed by the autopsy and
the analysis. That delay allowed the criminal to escape. Not that I
complain. To me, personally, her suicide came as a blessed release
from an almost intolerable position. But if I had been in his place, I
would have taken no chances. She would have gone to trial and to
the gallows.”
“Yes,” I admitted; “that was what justice demanded. But I cannot
be thankful enough for the delay that let her escape. Fiend as she
was, it would have been a frightful thing to have had to give the
evidence that would have hanged her.”
“It would,” he agreed; “and the thought of it was a nightmare to
me. However, we have escaped that; and after all, justice has been
done.”
We were silent for a few minutes, during which Thorndyke
smoked his pipe with a certain air of attention as if he expected me
to put some further questions. And, in fact, there were one or two
questions that I wanted to have answered. I began with the simplest.
“I am still a little puzzled by some of the circumstances in this
case. The infernal machine I happen to know to have been sent by
Barbara, though I don’t understand why she sent it. But Wallingford’s
proceedings are a complete mystery to me. What do you suppose
induced him to keep a watch on you in that extraordinary fashion?
And who was the man who shadowed him? There certainly was
such a man, for I saw him, myself. And the same man had been
shadowing Miss Norris. What do you make of it all?”
“One can only reason from past experiences,” he replied. “It
seems to be a rule that a person who has committed a crime cannot
remain quiet and let things take their course. There appears to be an
irresistible impulse to lay down false clues and create misleading
appearances. It is always a mistake, unless the false clues are laid
down in advance, and even then it is apt to fail and unexpectedly
furnish a real clue.
“Now Barbara, with all her astonishing cleverness, made that
mistake. She laid down a false clue in advance by her absences
from home, and the trick certainly worked successfully at the inquest.
But it was precisely those absences that put me on the track of the
candle, which otherwise might have passed unsuspected. The faked
medicine was another false clue which attracted my attention and
added to my suspicion concerning the candle. Then, after the event
came these other endeavours to mislead. They did neither harm nor
good, as it happened, since I had already marked her down as the
principal suspect. But if I had been in doubt, I should have followed
up those clues and found her at the end of them.
“As to Wallingford, I imagine that she led him to believe that I was
employed by you to fix the crime on him and that he was advised to
watch me and be ready to anticipate any move on my part; her
actual object being to cause him to behave in such a manner as to
attract suspicious attention. The function of the private detective—for
that is what he must have been—would be to keep Wallingford’s
nerves—and Miss Norris’s, too—in such a state that they would
appear anxious and terrified and tend to attract attention. The
infernal machine was primarily intended, I think, to cast suspicion on
one or both of them. That was what I inferred from the total absence
of finger-prints and the flagrantly identifiable character of the pistol
and the wool.
“But the greatest, the most fatal mistake that Barbara made was
the one that is absolutely characteristic of the criminal. She repeated
the procedure of a previous crime that had been successful. It was
that repetition that was her undoing. Either crime, separately, might
have been difficult to fix on her. As it was, each crime was proof of
the other.”
Once more we fell silent; and still Thorndyke had the air of
expecting some further question from me. I looked at him nervously;
for there was something that I wanted to ask and yet I hardly dared
to put it into words. For, as I had looked at those charts, a horrid
suspicion had taken hold of me. I feared to have it confirmed, and
yet I could not let it rest. At last, I summoned courage enough to put
the question.
“Thorndyke,” I said, “I want you to tell me something. I expect you
know what it is.”
He looked up and nodded gravely.
“You mean about Stella?” said he.
“Yes. How long would she have lived if she had not been
poisoned?”
He looked away for a few moments, and, impassive as his face
was, I could see that he was deeply moved. At length he replied:
“I was afraid you were going to ask me that. But since you have, I
can only answer you honestly. So far as I can judge, but for that
accursed ghoul, the poor girl might have been alive and well at this
moment.”
I stared at him in amazement. “Do you mean,” I demanded, “that
she was not really suffering from consumption at all?”
“That is what it amounts to,” he replied. “There were signs of old
tubercular trouble, but there was nothing recent. Evidently she had
good powers of resistance, and the disease had not only become
stationary, but was practically extinct. The old lesions had undergone
complete repair, and there is no reason to suppose that any
recurrence would have taken place under ordinary conditions.”
“But,” I exclaimed, hardly able to believe that the disaster had
been so overwhelmingly complete, “what about the cough? I know
that she always had a more or less troublesome cough.”
“So had Monkhouse,” he replied; “and so would any one have
had whose lungs were periodically irritated by inhaling particles of
arsenious acid. But the tubercular mischief was quite limited and
recovery must have commenced early. And Barbara, watching
eagerly the symptoms of the disease which was to rid her of her
rival, must have noted with despair the signs of commencing
recovery and at last resolved to do for herself what nature was failing
to do. Doubtless, the special method of poisoning was devised to
imitate the symptoms of the disease; which it did well enough to
deceive those whose minds were prepared by the antecedent illness
to receive the suggestion. It was a horribly, fiendishly ingenious
crime; calmly, callously devised and carried out to its appalling end
with the most hideous efficiency.”
After he had finished speaking, I remained gazing at him dumbly,
stupefied, stunned by the realization of the enormity of this frightful
thing that had befallen. He, too, seemed quite overcome, for he sat
silently, grasping his extinct pipe and looking sternly and fixedly into
the fire. At length he spoke, but without removing his gaze from the
bright embers.
“I am trying, Mayfield,” he said, gently, “to think of something to
say to you. But there is nothing to say. The disaster is too complete,
too irretrievable. This terrible woman has, so far, wrecked your life,
and I recognize that you will carry the burden of your loss so long as
you live. It would be a mere impertinence to utter futile and banal
condolences. You know what I, your friend, am feeling and I need
say no more of that; and I have too much confidence in your wisdom
and courage to think of exhortations.
“But, though you have been robbed of the future that might have
been, there is still a future that may be. It remains to you now only to
shoulder your fardel and begin your pilgrimage anew; and if the road
shall seem at first a dreary one, you need not travel it alone. You
have friends; and one of them will think it a privilege to bear you
company and try to hearten you by the way.”
He held out his hand and I grasped it silently and with a full heart.
And the closer friendship that was inaugurated in that hand-clasp
has endured through the passing years, ever more precious and
more helpful.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
This transcription follows the text of the first edition published by
Dodd, Mead & Company in 1928. However, the following alterations
have been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous
errors in the text:
Three occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been

repaired.
“plainsclothes” has been changed to “plainclothes” (Chapter III).
“numbers of others” has been changed to “number of others”
(Chapter VIII).
“attracts” has been changed to “attract” (Chapter X).
“less that” has been changed to “less than” (Chapter XVI).
“thier” has been changed to “their” (Chapter XI).
“quote practicable” has been changed to “quite practicable”
(Chapter XVII).
“the prisoner” has been changed to “the poisoner” (Chapter
XVII).

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Policing the Mexican Past: Transitional

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Policing the Mexican

Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict

Cover illustration: Jacky Chapman / Alamy Stock Photo

Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict

In the first phase, compromise describes reciprocal agreements between

Lay discourse picks up on the ambivalent nature of compromise after

transition in Mexico. Policing the past when the military is allowed to

Professor John Brewer

To complete this book I depended on many people and incurred count-

Fabián Sánchez granted me access to his files on human rights non-

1 Policing the Mexican Past 1

2 The Background: Authoritarianism and Past Atrocity

3 Transitional Justice: A Field of Practice and of Knowledge 67

4 Neither Inevitable Nor Necessary: The Emergence of

5 Making up ‘Transitional Justice’: Defining, Classifying,

6 The SPO’s Retributive Goals: A De Facto Amnesty221

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

repressed thousands of dissidents of the regime (Aguayo 2001a; Stevens

new government in many areas and undermine Fox’s chances of success.

Mexico’s ‘Transitional Justice’ Process

Visions on Transitional Justice

(and policing) of Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process, this book attempts

commissions, have been founded (Hayner 1994; Orentlicher 1991).

The Policing of the Past

In Mexico’s transitional moment, the language of human rights was

Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, and Center for

Malamud-Goti, J. 1989. Trying Violators of Human Rights: The Dilemma of

Needleman, C., and M. Needleman. 1969. Who Rules Mexico? A Critique of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21

2005: 10). In their analysis of electoral reforms, these interpretations

 he Mexican Authoritarian Regime

indigenous people fluctuated between indifference and p ­ aternalism, did

explicitly considered Mexico to be an authoritarian regime.3 This charac-

Limited Political Pluralism

processes predictably ended in the triumph of PRI candidates (Aguayo

121). Elections served as propaganda for the authoritarian regime’s activi-

The PRI governments also successfully promoted political and social

union leaders and employers an efficient legal resource to exterminate

The Centralisation of Power

Oppressing and Repressing Threats to the PRI Regime

In 1990, prominent Mexican intellectuals, Octavio Paz and Enrique

Bell, Michael Ignatieff, Hugh Thomas, Czesław Miłosz, Adam Michnik,

I gazed at the three charts and was profoundly impressed by the

Three occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been

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1 Policing the Mexican Past 1

2 The Background: Authoritarianism and Past Atrocity

3 Transitional Justice: A Field of Practice and of Knowledge 67

4 Neither Inevitable Nor Necessary: The Emergence of

5 Making up ‘Transitional Justice’: Defining, Classifying,

6 The SPO’s Retributive Goals: A De Facto Amnesty221

Mexico’s ‘Transitional Justice’ Process

Visions on Transitional Justice

The Policing of the Past

he Mexican Authoritarian Regime

indigenous people fluctuated between indifference and p aternalism, did

Limited Political Pluralism

The Centralisation of Power

Oppressing and Repressing Threats to the PRI Regime