The property of the Attorney General’s Office is vacant, like justice in Mexico. And not only because of the sudden departure of Alejandro Gertz Manero, but also because of the abandonment and dysfunction of the body responsible for investigating and prosecuting federal crimes in a country full of victims. In Mexico today there is no prosecutor and there is no justice, and the scandal is that this is not the reason for the relief or the uproar.
The analysis of what happened yesterday has many dimensions, and there is no doubt that politics is one of the most important of them. However, it is not the only one, and at this moment, it is perhaps not the most important either if our true intention is to address insecurity, violence and impunity. Therefore, in the following lines, I would like to present some data that bring us back to the important conversation, which is related to the state of the administration of justice in Mexico, so that we can with them evaluate the work of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and restore seriousness to the processes of appointing those who aspire to direct it:
According to national censuses of federal justice procurement and implementation by INEGI, the performance of the FGR between 2019 and 2024 left much to be desired. In these years, the Attorney General’s Office would investigate less, prosecute less, and achieve only a tiny minority of convictions in the cases it prosecuted.
According to the same source, the number of investigations opened by the FGR into federal crimes decreased from 98,000 in 2019 to just over 78,000 in 2024. For its part, although the determinations increased temporarily between 2019 and 2021, which indicates that the Public Ministry decided in a larger number of cases to continue – or not – the investigation, these determinations mostly led to not exercising the criminal procedure due to the lack of tests. In 2024 alone, 66.7% of the nearly 92,000 decisions registered at the federal level resulted in the process not continuing and only 17% triggering the exercise of criminal procedure. This means that the prosecutor’s office not only investigated less, but in six out of ten cases it reviewed it did not have enough elements to prosecute.
Finally, of those cases investigated for which criminal proceedings were decided, only a small minority reached court, and even fewer resulted in convictions. In 2024, FGR was able to bring 363 cases before a judge, obtaining convictions in only 216 cases.
These indicators are not the only ones to look at. Already in 2024, Mexico Ivaloa noted that the Public Prosecutor’s Office showed a worrying reliance on flagrante delicto to be able to prosecute its cases, lacked a strategic plan for the administration of justice and other tools such as outcome evaluation systems, and that these shortcomings could not be addressed if continued staff reductions continued. From Mexico United Against Crime, we also point out that there is no will on the part of the Attorney General to make the Senate vote in favor of the five members of the Citizens’ Assembly.
Other examples of how the actions of the Prosecutor and the Prosecutor’s Office ran counter to justice and showed deep disdain for victims include:
Not to object to the reform of the FGR Organic Law, which hindered the right of victims to contribute to the investigation of their cases and left the possibility of receiving evidence provided by them or carrying out investigative work requested by victims to the discretion of the Public Prosecution; The case of Alejandra Cuevas, where the institution’s prosecutor acted in a class-action manner to create a non-existent crime and deprive an innocent person of liberty who had regained his liberty until the Supreme Court intervened; and the offensive issues of the acquittal of General Salvador Cienfuegos, former Defense Minister of Enrique Peña Nieto, detained in the United States. Or the negligence with which the evidence was handled at Rancho Izaguirre in Teochitlán and the inability to properly investigate the embezzlement of the millionaire from Cigalex and the criminal network La Paredura or the murder of Depanhe Escobar, as well as the inability to obtain verdicts in the Odebrecht case or the espionage with Pegasus.
Given the current situation, it is the citizen’s duty to demand professional appointments and true institutional commitment to justice. Failure to do so will keep it vacant.