A woman holding up a World Cup ball next to police officers during Mexico City protests (SOURCE: Latin America Reports)
8/2/2026 (written by enkojo) — On June 11th, the day of the inaugural World Cup match in Mexico City, over 18,000 people came from across Mexico to protest the government’s failure to protect the rights of crime victims, using the global spotlight to amplify their message. One of these demonstrators, Venessa Gamez, protested on the steps of the Angel of Independence, holding a photo of her daughter, who had disappeared just under a year ago. This effort was part of a broader wave of protest across Mexico City to help bring awareness to the over 130,000 disappearances across the country. Most protesters attribute these problems to the government’s lack of consideration for victims. This leaves many families feeling betrayed by the very institutions meant to protect them. This points to the case of Virginia De La Cruz in the state of Zacatecas. In August of 2024, De La Cruz stormed the Zacatecas Congress crying. She found, shortly before the congress assembly, that her son had been in the morgue with a bullet found in his head after being presumed missing. Despite being in the morgue sincea November of 2023, she was not notified by the police about the body after consistently asking about her son.
This level of disregard for Mexico’s crime victims and their families illustrates why families feel disenfranchised and why some turn to alternative solutions. After the disappearance of her son in 2015, Veronica Rosas created “Uniendo Esperanzas,” a coalition of relatives of missing persons who support families who have suffered the effects of disappearances. The purpose of this organization is to put pressure on judicial authorities to properly investigate missing persons cases and to help them in any means possible, as she believes many judicial officials were not “willing to do their jobs.” Yet even as families struggle with the current state of justice, there is already a legal framework in place to prioritize the safety, security, and well-being of victims and their families.
Attending to Crime Victims’ Needs: Mexico’s 2014 General Victims Law
In 2008, Mexico completely uprooted its justice system, replacing an inquisitorial justice system with an adversarial one. The purpose of the reforms was not only to get rid of the justice system in place but also to have the new system increase the rule of law throughout Mexico. One of the major goals of the reforms was to change how government actors interacted with citizens. In the 2008 reforms, most of the new criminal code was focused on the protection of the accused to create a system that allows for the presumption of innocence while giving little attention to victims.
To address these issues, the Mexican government established the 2014 General Victims Law, bolstering the rights of victims throughout the criminal proceeding. Two major changes were enacted under the law. First, the rules established a new legal position, an Asesor Jurídico, or a victim’s legal advisor. The role is meant to serve as a specialized legal representative dedicated to securing the victims’ rights by providing guidance (acompañamiento), legal representation (representación legal), and requests for reparations (reparación de daño).
Under the general victims’ law, victims who cannot or prefer not to hire a private attorney have the right to a state-provided advisor who assists them from initial contact with authorities. In this new advisor role, the Asesor Jurídico is given the power to formulate complaints, request special protection for the victim, and provide evidence to help to understand the damages to the victim. And second, there are now federal and state public organizations meant to aid victims.
At the federal level, the Executive Commission for Victim Assistance (Comisión Ejecutiva de Atención a Víctimas, CEAV) acts as the operational arm of the National Victim Attention System. The CEAV is responsible for coordinating national victim policies and managing essential administrative units, specifically the Federal Victims Legal Advisors (Asesoría Jurídica Federal) and the National Victims Registry. The federal commission is tasked with managing resources for victims of federal crimes or human rights violations committed by federal authorities. The law also created State Executive Commissions for Victim Assistance (CEEAVs). CEEAVs are state-level organizations required to be established by the federal government to help victims of common-jurisdiction crimes and local human rights violations. These states’ commissions mirror the federal structure, providing social management and legal representation through their own state-level advisors.
The Current State of Assistance for Victims
Since the introduction of crime victim protections through the 2014 law, there have been significant strides. For instance, the CEAV provided 268,799 specialized services in social work, psychology, and medicine between January of 2023 and June of 2024. Over the same period, the CEAV managed $1.88 billion MXN to allocate food, housing, and medical transport. The CEAV was also able to offer 149,277 guidance and legal advice services and was able to provide 111,891 services in the areas of social work and medical and psychological support. This push was part of CEAV’s agenda to strengthen the capacities of the 32 Comprehensive Care Centers (CAIs) in Mexico. It was specifically to help increase multidisciplinary care services.
A picture of the CEAV headquarters in Mexico City (SOURCE: El Economista)
This progression can be seen not only within the federal government but also at the state level as well. Through the expansion of the framework of the Public Security Contribution Fund (FASP), the CEAV helped to fund CEEAVs across the country, increasing their investment by 90% from 2022 to 2024. Baja California’s CEEAVE provided 8,000 comprehensive services (mainly for women and girls) only through March 9, 2026, according to Commissioner María Alejandra Basaldua Ayala. In her promotion of the program, Basaldua Ayala also highlights that during the current state administration, over 165,978 comprehensive services have been provided to citizens of Baja California. The majority of the progress that was made as a result of the General Victims Law focused on the expansion of access to legal representation. However, important issues remain, particularly with regard to the quality of assistance that victims receive.
Ongoing Areas of Need: Mexico’s Indigenous Communities
Mexico has seen numerous calls for greater attention to the plight of crime victims, particularly those involving gender-based violence. Femicide, the most extreme form of this violence, has risen from 19.6 percent of all female homicides to 24.2 percent by 2024. Access to justice for these victims is not nearly the same for every individual, especially those with disadvantageous backgrounds.
The government of Mexico officially recognizes 68 distinct indigenous groups, many of which have very particular needs or problems of marginalization (such as access to translation) that can limit access for victims in their communities. A particular area of need is providing access to quality legal representation for Mexico’s indigenous groups. Specifically for Indigenous groups, there are often problems of land disputes, as many communities lack an official legal mechanism to claim land, leaving the rights to it vulnerable. This causes many small indigenous communities to have to fight drawn-out legal battles in pursuit of keeping their land
While Mexico’s crime victim protection laws have been in place for more than a decade, many attorneys lack adequate preparation and training to serve as crime victim advocates, especially in indigenous communities. For this reason, the local nonprofit organization, Gix Doo, has been working with Justice in Mexico to organize training and provide resources to attorneys working in local indigenous communities. Based in the state of Oaxaca, Gix Doo is co-directed by attorneys Alicia Asunción Valentín Mendoza and Akezali Flores Velasco, and the jointly operated training program is called “Comprehensive Legal Counsel for Indigenous Victims and their Organizations” (Asesoría Legal Integral a Víctimas Indígenas y sus Organizaciones, ALIVIO).
In a recent ALIVIO training video, Valentín Mendoza emphasizes that lawyers representing crime victims need to understand the victim’s lived experience. For example, Valentín Mendoza points out that beliefs in traditional medicine must be recognized and appreciated in order to be able to explain a victim’s conduct during a criminal proceeding or trial and help establish the context for why the victim may have sought traditional rather than state medical help. Additionally, it is important for attorneys to be familiar with the local norms and customs (usos y costumbres) that hold formal legal weight in many indigenous communities in Mexico, which have constitutionally protected rights to preserve their own internal systems to regulate social and administrative life.
Valentín Mendoza notes that state authorities often fail to recognize these laws, leading to the criminalization of community leaders who are arrested for acting on these customary laws. Many indigenous people often reside in isolated areas, creating significant transportation costs to access legal services that cause victims to under-report crimes or abandon their cases after reporting. In many cases involving indigenous people, language barriers confuse them and make it difficult to obtain proper representation.
Moving Forward
The World Cup gave Mexico a somewhat unprecedented spotlight. The plights of victims like Vanessa Gamez were now being viewed on a global stage, using that visibility to demand answers. Mexico’s 2014 General Victims Law gave victims tools, legal advisors, and institutions. But the amount of care given to the individual is still lagging behind the ideals of the laws put in place. Mexico continues to confront the more than 130,000 disappearances and large amounts of gender-based violence. The challenge ahead is ensuring that equal care is provided to every individual, regardless of background or means.
Sources:
Eagan, Madison. “Indigenous Women: The Invisible Victims of Femicide in Mexico.” 30 Nov. 2020.
kheinle. “Femicides Hit Record High as Protests Continue.” 1 Sept. 2020.
Pandit, Puja. “Violence Against Women in Mexico.” 13 May 2025.
Rosas, Veronica . “Inicio – Colectivo Uniendo Esperanzas.” 17 Oct. 2023.
United Mexican States – Congress of the Union. General Victims ACT. United Mexican States, Jan. 2013,
Víctimas, Comisión Ejecutiva de Atención a. “Asesoría Jurídica Federal.” Gob.Mx, 2026,
