Rule of U.S. Law in Mexico http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9694
“I don’t think there is any evidence that these programs work,” legal scholar and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law professor Deborah M. Weissman told the Americas Program.“There’s no doubt that the Mexican legal system needs improvement. Mexicans know that,” said Weissman. “They’re not doing nothing about it. What they’re doing is vastly different than what the United States is pushing on them.” When the reforms started, Mexican jurists felt that the reforms came from the top down, without meaningful participation from local lawyers or judges or examination of existing Mexican Rule of Law initiatives, explains Weissman.Weissman points out that what the U.S.-backed legal reform programs are doing in Mexico is strengthening prosecutors, and that there is no training for jury trials under the new system. “If you look at the allocation of Rule of Law money; it’s for surveillance it’s for ‘activating’, whatever the heck that means, [[[[new prisons in Mexico]]]]; it’s for training Mexicans with regard to the adversarial and oral trial systems, yet they do not introduce the jury system.”A study carried out by researchers working for the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States found that compared with citizens of other countries, Mexicans expressed confidence in the ability of jurors to make fair decisions, and showed willingness to participate as jurors. “The great majority of Mexicans have also supported the broader application of lay participation in the administration of justice,” reads the study. Regardless, in the U.S. government reports reviewed by Weissman, there is no reference to training or introducing jury trials in Mexico.U.S. funding for legal reforms in Mexico was integrated into the Mérida Initiative, a U.S. foreign aid package launched in Mexico in 2008 to provide funding and support for militarizing the drug war. In 2009, USAID awarded a $66.3 million dollar contract to Coffey International, the Australian company that owns Management Systems International. The contract, which ends in 2014, was to provide “support for legal reforms” in Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative.
[[[[[“These Rule of Law programs are always married to military expansion, just like theuilt several Cololmbian political pri Merida Initiative,” said Weissman, who notes that Rule of Law programs are a centerpiece of the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency manual. “You have a Rule of Law program in what is essentially a plan to militarize the drug war. You see that everywhere.”]]]]
[ed notes:wich serves the us military industrial complex,and prison industrial complex..keep in mind us corporations and us gov actually funded and built a few of Colombias prisons(for political prisioners,some of wich have abismal record of torture and human rights abuses).Plan meridia is modelled on Colombias ....and just as Plan Colombia destroyed justice system there,it too will have same outcome in Mexico,thats the goal after all...criminalization of social movements!!!
Weissman, whose detailed examination of the U.S. role in Mexico’s legal reforms will be published next year in the Cardozo Law Review, is skeptical about what exactly the United States has to teach other countries about law. “We are so punitive, and so disproportionate, and so racist, how could we be the model?” she asked