Mexico’s president wants to change his country’s constitution to replace local police with state police. He also wants legal authority to take over municipal governments infiltrated by organized crime.
But ongoing protests and recent polls suggest Mexicans aren’t convinced the change will make a difference.
The move follows disgust in Mexico over a long delay by the federal government to investigate the murders of 43 college students.
Mexico’s Attorney General says the slaughter was committed by drug gang killers working with local police on orders from an elected mayor.
The students disappeared in the city of Iguala. In the Chihuahua state border town of Ojinaga, business is done in the same way. Local police report to the mayor.
Ojinaga Mayor Miguel Carreon said replacing 18,000 local police chiefs in Mexico with 32 state police chiefs is a bold idea.
"There are many things that President Peña Nieto is changing in this country," Carreon said.
He’s referring not only to police reform proposals but also to education, communications and energy reform.
Peña Nieto has arrested a corrupt teachers union boss, chipped away at telecommunications monopolies and allowed foreign companies in to help restore Mexico's under-performing domestic oil and gas sector.
“Most of the time when we got big changes in the country, we get that kind of protest,” Nieto said.
Carreon said legitimate concern over the Iguala slaughter has been highjacked by Mexicans with a host of other, he claims, unrelated concerns.
“They are using the pain of those people of Iguala," Carreon said. "They are using what is happening in Iguala to protest.”
That statement is echoed by public figures people who are close to the Mexican president. It illustrates what polls show is a disconnect between citizens and their political leaders. The notion that a mayor worked hand-in-glove with police and organized crime is not new in Mexico. Many here believe Iguala is one image in a tapestry of corruption.
"Things are bad," said Dalia Morelos in Spanish at the plaza in Ojinaga.
She helped organize a candlelight vigil here that ended with university professors walking out in solidarity with protesters. That was in November and the professors have not returned.
"Plain and simple, police are corrupt," Morelos said.
She says police reform won’t succeed because people also have no confidence in state and federal police.
Across town, clothing manufacturer Salvador Vasquez disagrees.
He says police reform may actually take hold, given the way Iguala has galvanized outrage against corruption.
“I think for the first time in so many years, we all Mexicans are united. And this is not going to away like other movements. That’s a big thing because it’s not easy to get a Mexican angry and united, and now we are," Vasquez said.
Andrew Selee is a Mexico specialist at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholar in Washington, D.C.
“What Iguala has reminded Mexicans is that there are some really major parts of the foundations of the rule of law in the country that are still very weak,” Selee said. “The fact that they haven’t been able to stand up and say with a single voice how horrible this is has really discredited the political class in the eyes of many Mexicans.”
It’s that same political class that is crafting police reform. And the proposal to rein in local police ignores the reality that some municipal police. Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, to name two, are more professional today that their state counterparts.
