In July, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that members of the military accused of human rights violations be tried in civilian courts. The ruling, 37 years in the making, is expected to go a long way to reducing the frequency of human rights violations committed by the military. Since 2006, formal complaints against the military for human rights violations have increased dramatically, up from a total of only 182 complaints in that year to a cumulative total of more than 4,800 today. Accountability for these violations, which have included executions, rapes and other abuses, has been almost non-existent through military courts and is expected to increase in civilian trials. The Supreme Court's ruling is a direct result of the work of MacArthur grantees, particularly the Comision Mexicana de Defensa y Promocion de los Derechos Humanos (Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights), which for more than a decade pursued the case of Rosenda Radilla Pacheco. Pacheco disappeared at a Mexican military checkpoint in 1974 - a victim of the government's "Dirty War" (its effort to crush opposition movements through military tactics).
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