Mexico appoints prosecutor who oversaw unsolved Juarez murders as attorney general

Women in Juarez painting crosses in protest

Women’s rights groups (among others) are outraged over the appointment of Arturo Chavez as the new attorney general of Mexico.

Chavez is the former lead prosecutor of Chihuahua state. He held the post in the 1990s during the era of the Ciudad Juarez “femicides,” when investigations into the murders of hundreds of young women went nowhere. President Felipe Calderon named him to replace Eduardo Medina Mora earlier this month as part of a mid-term cabinet shakeup. This prompted protests from near and far. “It is like sending a wolf to protect the lambs,” one Spanish lawmaker said. (For more on the Juarez murders, read Alma Guillermoprieto’s “A Hundred Women” here and Max Blumenthal’s “Day of the Dead” here.)

The senate approved the appointment in a 75-27 vote yesterday. Chavez hails from the same party as Calderon, who has seen his political powers diminish since recent congressional elections left his National Action Party with less than a third of the seats in the lower house. To give you a sense of what the climate is like for Calderon right now, yesterday the head of the public security office, Genaro Garcia Luna, delivered to congress a proposal to dismantle the country’s municipal police forces. As he laid out his plan to integrate them into 32 state corporations, opposition lawmakers hung signs in the shape of crucifixes around the room (one read “Calderon wants blood”) and repeatedly told him to resign. One called him an “assasin.”

Replacing the attorney general is meant to put a fresh face on the drug war, which only seems to get bloodier. At this point I know as much about Chavez as I’ve learned from reading the papers here over the last few days. But it strikes me that someone isn’t thinking clearly over at Los Pinos if the administration’s best bet for revamping the war is putting in charge the former prosecutor of the country’s most violent state. Also, angering the international human rights community seems especially ill-timed given the recent dustup over Mexico’s failure to meet human rights requirements tied to the release of the Plan Merida money.