Highlights of a conversation on crises of violence and human rights, including forced northern migration from Central America and the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa.
Rafael Fernández de Castro opened the second session of the conference by placing the session topic within the context of macro trends in violence in Mexico and Latin America over the past decade. In that time, violence has become “chronic” in Mexico. Fernández de Castro recalled that on a radio program in 2006, he was asked whether the situation in Mexico could become as violent as that in Colombia, to which he answered, “certainly,” a prediction seemingly, yet tragically, borne out. Now, Fernández de Castro, explained, the entire region of Latin America is living through a “crisis of violence.” “Today,” he warned, “every country in Latin America” could be affected by such chronic insecurity. One major reason, he argued, is a lack of state capacity — “police, prosecutors, judges, prisons in the region” — an institutional “problem that spans borders.”
