Ramiro Hernandez Llanas, having committed a murder while in the U.S.
illegally after escaping from
a prison in Mexico where he was serving
another murder sentence, was
executed last week by Texas authorities.
Mexican's Execution Confirms U.S. 'Decline' and 'Xenophobia' (La Jornada, Mexico)
"The death of Ramiro Hernandez Llanas
was the culmination of a process characterized by the systematic denial by U.S.
prison authorities of multiple appeals by the defense, and provisional measures
granted to our compatriot by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. ... The execution confirms a growing pattern
of racism and xenophobia within U.S. society and institutions, which
paradoxically coincide with the arrival of the first non-Caucasian president in
the White House."
In
general terms, capital punishment is an abominable and inhumane punishment that
not only highlights the inefficiency and failure of law enforcement in
countries that practice it, but it goes against the most fundamental right of
human beings - the right to life. In the case of Hernandez Llanas,
this sanction was an even greater injustice, since it was the result of
procedural errors present in almost all cases of Mexicans sentenced to death in
the United States.
Yesterday,
in condemning this in a statement, Foreign Secretary Kuribreña
recalled that Hernandez Llanas was the fourth Mexican
executed in clear violation of the decision of the ruling by the International
Court of Justice delivered in the Avena Case, which was a demand presented by our country
against the Washington government to review the 50 cases of Mexicans who had
been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, without respect for their right
to consular assistance. Among them we also find Edgar
Tamayo Arias, who was executed last January.
From
another point of view, the penalty we mentioned confirms a growing pattern of
racism and xenophobia within U.S. society and institutions, which paradoxically
coincide with the arrival of the first non-Caucasian president in the White
House. According to a 2012 report by Amnesty International, a third of those
executed in Texas during the previous year were Hispanic, while of the total of
death penalty victims in that country over the last decade, 65 percent belonged
to the Hispanic and Black population.
The
inescapable corollary of the discriminatory application of the death penalty is
the exorbitant rate of deportations under Barak Obama’s presidency, totaling
nearly two million since the beginning of his administration, and more than 140,000
thousand this year alone.
As
with the application of the death penalty, which constitutes an atrocious form
of legalized murder, the expulsion of undocumented foreign nationals mainly effects
Mexican and Central American citizens. This policy is doubly hypocritical,
first because it doesn't follow a strictly legalistic zeal, but the need to
regulate the cheap labor force in that country. Second, because it demonizes
undocumented migration while the U.S. simultaneously benefits from the invaluable
contribution this phenomenon makes to its economy and culture.
The
state murder committed against Hernandez Llanas stands
at the vortex between the persistence of a judicial aberration like the death
penalty, and the social, political and institutional decline of our neighboring
country regarding the minorities present in the country. Both processes show how
invalid are the claims of the United States, which hold itself up as a world
leader with respect to human rights.
