THE RIGHT TO THE TRUTH AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN MEXICO

Abstract

This contribution reflects on the role played by "transitional justice" in shaping democracies. This one seeks to address serious human rights violations (forced disappearances, torture, homicides) that have been uttered in the past by public authorities to civil society during stages of conflicts that alter the peace. It has the claim that those situations do not remain unpunished, that they do not  recur and that an institutional redesign be established: democratic and rights. We have set ourselves the objective of analyzing, on one hand, the scope of the truth and other components that make up transitional justice, and, on the other hand, the situation of democratic transition in Mexico, describing the main obstacles to its materialization. We have used the historical and comparative method and also systemic sociology. We can see that the truth (past), as determination of those who are subject to punishment is a construction of the legal system. That this justice is not ontological but casuistic; that  rights do not constitute immunities of subjects, that guarantees come later and that the lastones are used by the State to legitimize itself. In Mexico, transitional justice has served to legitimize impunity and has been used to show respect and commitment to civil society, human rights defenders, and the international community. In any case, there has been neither justice nor transition.