Lawyers are disappearing in Mexico and Central America

Karla Zabludovsky has a terrific story on Mexican Lawyers Are Disappearing, Leaving Nothing But Fear And Questions Behind for Buzzfeed.

DURANGO, Mexico — When Claudio Hugo Gallardo disappeared in 2013, his sons scoured the local hospital, prison, and morgue frantically. They combed through video footage recovered from Gallardo’s last known location and even inquired with the cartels whether their operatives had picked up the well-known lawyer.

But before Gallardo’s family could find him, they stopped looking.

“It’s for our own peace. We don’t want threats,” said Claudio Gallardo, one of the attorney’s sons. The family has floated several theories, including the involvement of government officials, cartel thugs, and a combination of both, but prefer to be discreet about their findings, citing orders by local authorities to stop prodding.

Gallardo is one of more than 60 lawyers killed or disappeared here during a spate of crimes against litigators that began in 2008, according to members of Durango’s Benito Juárez Bar Association. Some of the bodies that have been recovered carried messages from criminal groups saying the litigator should not have been defending certain clients, said Celina López Carrera, who is in charge of the state’s public prosecutors.

The Durango attorney general’s office opened a specialized unit to investigate crimes against lawyers in 2010. The unit’s head, Orieta Valles, said none of the 14 cases assigned to it have been solved.

Unfortunately, the murder of lawyers is not confined to Durango, Mexico. From a March 2013 Insight Crime article

More than 50 lawyers were murdered in Honduras between 2010 and 2012, according to a government report, with almost total impunity for their killers.

In the first three years of President Porfirio Lobo's rule 53 lawyers were murdered, yet only two people have been convicted in the cases, according to a report submitted to the Honduran Congress by the country's National Human Rights Commission.

The lawyers, 43 of whom were men, worked not only in criminal law, but also in areas such as commercial and family law, reported La Tribuna. Some worked as public prosecutors, while some provided legal advice to unions and campesino social movements.

The majority were killed inside their vehicles, often in front of their family, friends, colleagues or clients. Of the 53 murders, 49 were carried out with a firearm.

Other reports estimate 68 deaths in Honduras over the three year period.

Meanwhile at least ten lawyers were killed in Guatemala in 2013.

Honestly, I don't remember coming across articles indicating that lawyers were being targeted in El Salvador.

While the press and courts are pressured in all three countries of the Northern Triangle, the extent of the violence is just so much greater in Guatemala and Honduras than it is in El Salvador.

It's hard to build a democratic rule of law when those tasked with carrying out such an important function are targeted by members of the state as well as gangs and organized crime.