Mexico Faces UN Scrutiny Over Widespread Torture Practices

Mexico City — Civil society organizations have called on the Mexican state to fully collaborate with the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) during its scheduled visit in January 2026. They warn that despite normative advances, torture persists as a widespread practice in the country, citing failures in prevention mechanisms and historical impunity.

The 2016 Precedent: Denial of Access and Opacity

The state’s full collaboration becomes an urgent necessity, considering the background. María Luisa Aguilar, director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh), recalled the difficulties encountered by the SPT during its previous visit in 2016.

That year, when Enrique Peña Nieto was president, the SPT delegation was denied access to specific military installations in Iguala, Guerrero.

Aguilar also detailed how opacity hindered public knowledge of the final report from that visit. The content of the report—which can only be made public if the government authorizes it—was not disclosed until organizations litigated the case through the now-defunct National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (Inai). Therefore, the organizations emphasize that transparency with information must be total.

Institutional Failures and High-Risk Legal Figures

While Mexico has the Law to Prevent, Investigate and Sanction Torture, in addition to the National Crime Registry, the organizations point out that these normative advances have not stopped the widespread practice.

Aguilar specified that the National Prevention Mechanism, which operates under the National Human Rights Commission, “is not functioning as it should.”

Additionally, the director of Centro Prodh exposed the existence of legal figures that clash with international standards and endanger the commission of some types of torture. Mandatory pretrial detention is one of these figures. Inconsistencies have also been identified in the National Registry of Detentions, particularly regarding people apprehended in migration contexts, who are not included in that database.

Impunity as the Driver of the Practice

Impunity is the factor that allows torture to remain an extended practice. “The issues of impunity remain very clear, and for that same reason they allow [the crime] to continue being widespread in the country,” stated María Luisa Aguilar in an interview.

Torture as a Repression Tool in Various Contexts

Denisse Montiel, co-director of the Center for Justice, Peace and Development, agreed on the prevalence of the crime and offered data about where it has been documented. Montiel indicated that cases of torture have been recorded in detention centers, in annexes, and even used as a means of repression during protests, mentioning the case of Jalisco.

Montiel warned that the practice has transcended its traditional use in detentions and fabrication of guilty parties: “We are talking about it continuing to be used as a mechanism not only in detention processes, in the fabrication of guilty parties, but it has also been extrapolated to other contexts.”

The authorities that have been accused of committing this practice include municipal and state police, elements of state justice prosecutors’ offices or attorney generals’ offices, and members of the National Guard.

Given this panorama, Denisse Montiel emphasized the significance of this visit: the arrival of the subcommittee experts “is extremely important to be able to make visible, document, and identify what the situation of torture that prevails in Mexico is.” Will the Mexican state manage to guarantee the transparency that was denied to civil society in the past, or will the history of opacity documented since 2016 repeat itself?