Ernesto Canales, RENACE
It is not an exaggeration to say that a national movement to transform the Mexican legal system is being carried out in our country. It is loud and clear in the criminal legal system, and from there, it has sprawled to other areas.
In Monterrey, almost twenty years ago, a group of friends decided to act against the cruelest atrocity our criminal system had created: the treatment of the Poor; those people unjustly subjected to the Mexican criminal process with no means to defend themselves. There was no possible way out for these individuals or their families. We set up Renace, a nonprofit organization, to defend such cases. It wasn’t difficult to find cases that were so emblematic they could call public attention. Cases such as:
a) A 74 year old man, with a leg prosthesis, sentenced for homicide, supposedly for participating in a gang fight of young men he had not known before; the judge never met or saw him, nor considered his physical condition, the age difference and the lack of any prior contacts with the perpetrators
b) A young mother in jail with a sentence for seven years accused of stealing diapers for her baby; lost her freedom and her son
c) An eighteen year old man sentenced to twelve years in prison for stealing two kilos of beef barbecue in a night of many drinks
The list could go on. After reviewing and documenting more than twenty thousand cases it became obvious to us, and to the academicians supporting our work, that most of the injustices were caused by the applicable laws and regulations as they were geared to render unrestrictive powers to the State and therefore to the authorities in charge.
