Mobilizing for Accountability Amidst Persistent Impunity: Victims' Voices in Mexico

How do societies where governments have historically ignored human rights atrocities mobilize for transitional justice (TJ)? We suggest that partisan-motivated opposition to accountability—voters’ willingness to hold out-parties but not in-parties accountable for wrongdoing—becomes a major obstacle to truth and justice in societies with persistent impunity. Yet the active participation of non-partisan victims’ organizations in TJ signals the fairness of accountability processes and mitigates opposition.

We focus on Mexico, which has repeatedly failed to reckon with atrocities committed under right-wing governments in autocracy and democracy. Using original surveys conducted during Mexico’s first leftist administration, we show that while observationally the president’s leftist followers were more supportive of TJ than right-wing citizens, experimentally both sides opposed accountability when co-partisans were responsible for atrocities. 

Our central experimental finding reveals that the participation of victims’ organizations in TJ can sway opposition, particularly when partisan justice deniers perceive organized victims to be autonomous guarantors of unbiased accountability processes.

Guillermo Trejo is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and director of the Violence and Transitional Justice Lab at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. His research explores political violence, social movements, human rights and transitional justice in Mexico and Latin America.

He is the co-author of Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico (2020) and author of Popular Movements in Autocracies (2012). Trejo has published in top political science journals and received several prestigious awards, including the Gabriel Almond and Mancur Olson Awards from APSA.

His current research focuses on transitional justice, indigenous resistance to narco rule, and the dynamics of local violence in Mexico. He is a regular contributor to El País and Animal Político.