• HOUSE: Mexico’s Lower House of Congress passed an amnesty law aimed at benefiting non-violent and first time offenders jailed for committing federal crimes like drug distribution, drug consumption and abortion; yet the total number of people benefiting from the law is unknown.
• IMPACT: “The law seeks to benefit people who have committed low impact crimes and who because of their precarious economic condition have not had the opportunity to have an adequate defense”, said Luis Enrique Martínez, a Labor Party member in the Mexican Lower House.
• CRITICISM: Critics say that the amnesty would just cover a small number of prisoners given that most people are actually processed in state courts and not in federal ones. An example: in the past decade, only 3 people were sentenced for abortion at the federal level according to GIRE an NGO.
• CONTEXT: Months before the start of the electoral race that brought him to power, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador provoked outrage in 2017 when he said he was open to studying whether Mexican drug kingpins could benefit from an amnesty; however, the idea did not get traction.
