Minister Yasmín Esquivel Mossa during an act of protocol in Mexico City in November 2022. Isaac Esquivel (EFE)
The copied dissertation of the Minister of the Nation’s Supreme Court (SCJN) Yasmín Esquivel has exposed a chain of plagiarism within the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the country and in general Latin America. The scandal has grown like a snowball over the hours. Adding to the stunner that the work to obtain the rank of Minister of the Supreme Court was exactly the same as last year is the revelation that her tutor, Professor Martha Rodríguez Ortiz, advised at least six theses between 1986 and 2010, plagiarized as verified by EL PAÍS. In addition, there is another thesis identical to Esquivel’s, presented in 1993 and peer-reviewed by another professor. UNAM has announced that it will begin “a detailed analysis of the content and circumstances of the case,” while the SCJN, where the news has hit like a bomb, remains in an awkward silence.
Just 10 days after the main court in Mexico elected its new president, a controversy has erupted at the hands of one of its ministers, a candidate for the court’s presidency and one of the best-placed, favorite of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The first blow to Yasmín Esquivel came from academic Guillermo Sheridan, who revealed in an article in LatinUs that her final project to obtain a law degree in 1987 was similar to that presented the year before. That newspaper was looking for Rodríguez late in the afternoon, who did not respond to requests for comment. During an interview with W Radio this morning, the professor asserted that the accusation is “an attack on women because they want to be something better” and “a stupid and unbelievable thing”.
The two theses, both advised by Martha Rodríguez and bearing the same title: “Ineffectiveness of unions in trustworthy workers under Article 123 Section A”, can be consulted free of charge in the UNAM repository. Word for word they are two identical works: they share an index, an introduction, chapters and even repeat the same grammatical mistakes. There is only one difference, Esquivel does not include the fieldwork that Edgar Ulises Báez Gutiérrez included in 1986. “It’s such gross plagiarism that it’s even rude. The only thing that can still be plagiarized is the recognitions,” Juan Jesús Garza Onofre, a researcher at UNAM’s Legal Research Institute, told EL PAÍS.
There has been no news from Báez Gutiérrez so far. But the problem doesn’t end here. There is another exact thesis to that of 1986 and that of Esquivel. Now titled “Trustworthy Workers’ Union” and introduced in 1993 by Juan Carlos Blanco Silva, who was a State Department representative attached to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the Investigation of Crimes by Public Officials until at least 2018, PGJDF. Blanco Silva’s work opens the focus of irregularities to something bigger: His was not advised by Rodríguez, but by María Estela González Vidal. That is, the same work was presented three times, but by two different professors.
The same mistake, in five different theses
After the theses on trustworthy workers follow those of Rodolfo César Navarro López in 2008 and those of Juan Carlos Martínez Mendoza in 2010. Both were supervised by Martha Rodríguez and in their cases they are copied exactly by 25 pages corresponding to the chapter ” background of the unions”. Altogether there is one grammatical error that defies the passage of decades, the same misplaced comma between subject and predicate in five UNAM theses: “English unionism recognizes antecedents”, on page 17 in 1986, on page 14 in 1987 , at page 20 in 1993, 56 in 2008, and 11 in 2010.
But not only trade union issues are subject to plagiarism. EL PAÍS was able to show that two other dissertations entitled “Analysis of the Letter of Resignation”, which were also supervised by Martha Rodríguez, have the same text, the same paragraphs and a different order. What Sagrario Reyes Kimball places on page 61 in 2007 advances to page 53 in the work of Rigoberto Germán García Carvajal in 2008. On this occasion the plagiarism is more camouflaged and some connectors are changed in the repeated paragraphs, but the content of the text is the same at the end, there are the same quotes at the bottom of the page, the same words in bold, the same misplaced tildes in “the” or the same lack of tildes in “domestic”. Martha Rodríguez is listed as the supervisor of 500 theses at the university.
The percentage of copied text that is considered plagiarism is not accurate. It can vary according to the standard of the university or even the professor. There are some academics who consider misquoted ideas to be plagiarism. The citation systems also vary according to the institution: APA, Chicago, ISO690… However, this does not happen in the theses identified, where pages and whole pages are repeated without recourse to previous works. “Every case of plagiarism is serious,” says CIDE researcher Ximena Medellín, “Institutions must take every tip seriously, but that goes beyond any assumption. It is vital that UNAM launch a thorough investigation as Minister Esquivel has many years to go before the court.”
Title withdrawal possible
This scandal has thrown a meteorite in the image of two relevant Mexican institutions: UNAM and the Supreme Court. Garza Onofre points out that the research announced by the university will be slow – “the unamitic bureaucracy” – but will be “valuable”: “Any decision of this magnitude or related to plagiarism is collegial, there are many committees, they advise and from there you make every decision. They may last.” For now, UNAM has announced that the Academic and Research Integrity Committee of the Aragon Faculty of Advanced Studies will be in charge of the analysis.
What can Minister Esquivel’s punishment be? “The most extreme: title withdrawal,” says Garza Onofre, on the other hand it could be a warning to her or the obligation to write her thesis again. “Although many years have passed and the minister has a master’s degree and a doctorate, there is a stain on the file. The minister is a former student, it is a difficult case, there is no ABC, but there is a possibility that they can make this decision through counseling, ”says the lawyer. A bachelor’s degree revoked could, like dominoes, trigger a loss of his license to practice and ultimately exoneration from his position on the Supreme Court. But there is still a long way to go, the analysis has only just begun and could take months.
That means the investigation won’t be completed until January 2, the date the SCJN elects its new president. Esquivel was one of the five candidates alongside Norma Piña – the only other woman – Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, Alberto Pérez Dayán and Javier Laynez. The news hit a court that has been officially on hiatus since December 15. With the ministers and their teams at home, some even on holiday (only five out of 11 appear). It’s a media coup that seems very calculated. The Esquivel revelation highlights an unprecedented tension, even including personal attacks, surrounding the election to the presidency of the country’s highest court. At the moment, neither a minister nor the SCJN has issued an institutional statement on the subject. Everyone has to meet again on January 2nd, although the pundits practically take Esquivel out of the race.
The minister tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire. In a series of tweets, he published documents from colleagues confirming his work history. So far, neither President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who chose the minister to enter the Supreme Court in 2019, nor anyone close to the government have defended Esquivel.
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