Guest column
Judge Karla Macías and her court, the Ninth District Court in Irapuato, Guanajuato, have been at the forefront of the Federal Judiciary for years in protecting the rights of disappeared persons and their families. In 2015, Judge Macías reinvented the amparo (writ of protection) against enforced disappearance to make it a truly effective recourse, deploying the court's powers in the search for Juan Flores. This involved, among other things, her staff entering military barracks and directly obtaining crucial security footage.http://bit.ly/3UJzlI8, http://bit.ly/3TFoXzw). At a 2018 event, the first to bring hundreds of relatives of missing persons to the Supreme Court (including to the podium), Judge Macías herself explained her work in the case of Juan (http://bit.ly/2Qa2GK3).
In 2018, Karla Macías earned the nickname "iron judge" by fining the Secretary of the Navy for not immediately reporting forced disappearances in Tamaulipas (http://bit.ly/3Exu5BF), whose victims he searched for in every way possible. Far from “generating impunity”, in these two cases the Court constantly monitored the FGR's investigation, contributing to the fact that they are among the very few in which the FGR has exercised criminal action for forced disappearance (http://bit.ly/3E7mMzc). The ASF revealed last year that throughout 2020 the FGR did not prosecute a single case of forced disappearance (https://bit.ly/3N2vOBy, (p. 52). The causes of impunity must be sought elsewhere.
The work of this Court has been highlighted as a good practice (http://bit.ly/3Eb5WiD pp. 238-240, http://bit.ly/3hFfV8s) and even served as a model for the guide El amparo buscador, published in 2021 by the CNB (http://bit.ly/3wJlK6KThe greatest recognition has come from the families themselves, who travel to Irapuato from distant places to seek protection. When someone disappears, we can go to the police or the prosecutor's office. But when it is the police or the prosecutor's office that forcibly disappears them, in addition to requesting a search commission, we can go to the judges (considered the primary authority by the Standardized Search Protocol), because they are the system's check. Their independence is our protection against the worst abuses.
