AMLO further militarizes Mexican public security
Mexico's president plans to put the National Guard under army command, even though the constitution says it must operate under civilian leadership
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador dropped a bombshell at his Monday press conference, announcing he would sign a decree putting the National Guard under Defence Secretariat (SEDENA) command – even though the constitution states the militarized police force shall operate under civilian leadership.
AMLO, as the president is known, previously said he would send a constitutional reform to Congress, which would assign the National Guard to SEDENA authority. But the prospects for approval in Congress – where AMLO’s MORENA party and its allies lack a supermajority – appear slim. Any decree would be challenged to the Supreme Court.
“The Federation will have a civil police institution called the National Guard,” Article 21 of the constitution – approved in 2019 – clearly states. “The law will determine the organic and management structure of the National Guard, which will be attached to the secretariat of the public security branch, which will formulate the National Public Security Strategy, the respective programs, policies and actions.”
Despite announcing military leadership for the National Guard, AMLO insisted on calling it civilian and saying it would operate in such a manner. He said Tuesday:
“It’s going to continue being a civil institution depending on the National Defence Secretariat. … I have a moral obligation to defend this point and I’ll continue to do so.”
The move to put the National Guard under SEDENA control continued Mexico’s improbable path of militarization under AMLO, who self-identifies as part of the Mexican left – which historically distrusted the military over its roles in cracking down on the student protests of the 1960s and 1970s and hunting guerrillas during the dirty war.
But AMLO has come to see the military as a partner in power. He has tapped SEDENA and the Navy Secretariat (SEMAR) with tasks ranging from public security to operating seaports and the customs service to building and operating a new Mexico City airport (and providing security at the old Mexico City airport) to managing a national park in the Yucatán Peninsula.
AMLO has become so dependent on SEDENA that he was forced to deal with discontent among top army brass over the arrest of former defence secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, who was detained upon landing at LAX in 2019, charged with drug trafficking and corruption offences – then sent back to Mexico, which promptly exonerated him.
Mexican publication Eje Central reported SEDENA’s budget has ballooned by 700% since AMLO took office in late 2018, while “the armed forces took operational and even managerial control of 176 institutions.” Eje Central also noted:
Such has been the demand for personnel, that both (SEDENA) and (SEMAR) have had to convince retired or discharged elements to work on other tasks, so that they join managerial or middle management positions.
‘EL PUEBLO UNIFORMADO’
AMLO calls the military “el pueblo uniformado” – the people in uniforms. It’s not a new statement, though it’s a trope, which fits his populist approach to politics. For its part, the army exited politics in the 1940s after striking a deal with the predecessor of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to stay out of political matters. In exchange, civilian leaders largely left the military alone – an arrangement sparing Mexico the coups plaguing other Latin American countries, according to PRI talking points.
AMLO seemingly sees the army as an organization, which will “protect” the suite of mega projects he’s promoting – the Felipe Ángeles International Airport north of Mexico City, along with airports in Tulum, Chetumal and Palenque, and the Mayan Train circling the Yucatán Peninsula – from being privatized or closed in the future. He announced the creation of a military controlled company to oversee the projects in 2021, saying at the time:
“We have already made a decision to shield these projects, because, knock on wood … if the corrupt neoliberals return they will want to privatize what they could not previously or did not have the time to hand over [to cronies].”
The president expressed similar sentiments when announcing plans to put the National Guard under army control. He has voiced worries that future presidents would dismantle to reconstitute the National Guard – not unlike former president Enrique Peña Nieto disappearing the public security secretariat (putting it under the interior ministry) and AMLO himself scrapping the Federal Police (which he considered irredeemably corrupt for having been founded during the Felipe Calderón administration and overseen by the now-indicted Genero García Luna). He said Monday:
“What I want is that it’s constitutionally established so that it cannot be reversed because if we leave it without a constitutional reform, it will remain, but what I don’t want is that the same thing happens to the National Guard what happened to the Federal Police.”
MOST TRUSTED INSTITUTION
The president’s preference for the military can be hard to explain, though some observers attribute it to him holding the idea of soldiers acting more honourably than police, politicians and government officials. Polls consistently show the military ranking as the country’s most trustworthy institution – even as accusation of human rights abuses mount and SEDENA has never fully allowed investigations into its actions on the 43 Ayotzinapa students who were disappeared in September 2014.
The 2020 National Civic Culture Poll (ENCUCI) from the state statistics agency INEGI, put public trust in the army and navy at 63.8%, while the National Guard measured 60.5%.
Another INEGI poll in 2021 known as the ENVIPE (National Survey of Victimization and Public Security) showed 90.2% of the public trusting the navy, with 87.8% of respondents expressing similar sentiments about the army.
Observers have long posited the public holds the military in such high esteem for its work during natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes, quickly mobilizing to feed and house displaced populations. But the army has long been a fallback in the public security quagmire as the governors prefer not to invest political capital in training and equipping state police forces and instead pawning off responsibility for public security on the federation – which would send in soldiers or the Federal Police.
SOLDIERS SYNONYMOUS WITH HONESTY?
AMLO has spoken of an idealized, patriotic and pure vision of the Mexican military – free of corruption, in spite of a dearth of transparency and accountability from the notoriously hermetic SEDENA hierarchy. He’s also portrayed the military as a part of his so-called “Fourth Transformation” – the political branding of his administration. The 4T branding supposes that his administration is the fourth transformation in Mexican history, putting it on par with independence, the reform laws of Benito Juárez and the Revolution of 1910. He said of the army at Revolution celebrations in November 2021:
“It hasn’t belonged, nor is it going to belong – I’m certain – to the oligarchy. They come from below and have as their origin and identity in the deep Mexico.”
Lilian Chapa Koloffon, senior researcher at the World Justice Project Mexico, described the López Obrador approach to the army as idealized. She said in an interview with the El País podcast La Vespertina:
“There is an enormous disdain for the police and a blind faith in the military. The president sees the military as synonymous with honesty and by the same token sees the civilian side as corrupt.
“A big mistake has been not understanding that the function of public security and national security are not interchangeable, generic functions.”
ARMY PULLED INTO PUBLIC SECURITY
Then-president Felipe Calderón donned a military uniform shortly after his inauguration Dec. 1, 2006 and sent soldiers into his home state of Michoacán to stamp out drug cartels. He argued at the time that he had no other option – with Mexican police forces not up to the task.
Politicians have repeatedly called on the army and navy to serve in public security roles – to the point the Peña Nieto administration won approval for a controversial Internal Security Law in 2017. Critics complained the law simply regularized the military’s role in public security, while weakening civilian oversight. The Supreme Court overturned the law in 2018. López Obrador, meanwhile, signed a decree in 2020 keeping the military at the forefront of public security tasks until 2024.
AMLO wasn’t expected to lean so heavily on the military for public security. He had spoken out previously against military, saying in 2010, “It is not with the army that the problems of insecurity and violence can be resolved.”
Former supreme court justice Olga Sánchez Cordero – who AMLO appointed interior minister in 2018 and whose pending participation in his administration attracted progressive voters uneasy with AMLO’s social conservatism – plainly outlined a civilian-led National Guard, saying in 2018:
“The institution that we are thinking of would not give off an image of militarization, a National Guard, because they’re not going to be soldiers. Soldiers will be for national sovereignty. They’re going to be police with different training: military police, naval police, Federal Police and all of that is going to be joined together in the National Guard. In other words, the term is police, not soldiers.”
NATIONAL GUARD ORIGINS
The National Guard was supposed to start out as an amalgam of military police and members of the Federal Police. Some 76% of the Federal Police officers joined the National Guard, which was to operate under civilian leadership. The National Guard was first deployed to the northern and southern borders in June 2019 to stop migrants, following Mexico bowing to threats from the Trump administration that it stop transmigration through the country or face escalating tariffs.
Evaluating the National Guard’s performance to date has proved difficult for analysts. Francisco Rivas of the National Citizen Observatory, which monitors crime in Mexico, told this newsletter:
“The operations carried out from (the start) by the National Guard … are operations in conjunction with the armed forces. So how much is the National Guard and how much is the army in operational terms? It’s really hard to know.”
Part of the problem started with the National Guard’s initial recruiting, according to a former army sergeant familiar with the force. Soldiers, he said, weren’t anxious to become police officers. NCOs, meanwhile, pawned off their worst soldiers on the new National Guard.
A state police commander in Tamaulipas, which border Texas, was also scathing in his assessment of the National Guard. He described it as passive and providing little proactive assistance. He told this newsletter:
“You have to invite them to participate in the operatives, to share information with them because they don’t bring anything.
“What the Guard does is nothing but patrol and head out in support when there is an attack on the state police and from then on, nothing.”
The commander spoke of working 13 months in southern Tamaulipas as a commander, where he said the National Guard “never brought me a drunk, never brought me an aggressive person.” He continued:
“In the south [of Tamaulipas], suddenly SEDENA and the state police joined up to do rounds and set up filters. That only was to give a perception of security and coordination. But these operations are not productive. We call it ‘pantallas’” – slang in Spanish for giving the illusion of something – “or ‘carousels’ because all you do is drive in circles.”
FEDERAL POLICE DISBANDED
The National Guard was introduced as a replacement for the Federal Police, which AMLO considered corrupted. Rivas described the Federal Police as “the first Mexican institution, the only Mexican institution constructed under the premise of having a clear definition of results.” He continued:
“When the Federal Police was created, within less than a year after its creation there was already an approved professionalization plan. … It told us what courses each of the elements had to take, at what time, which ones were entry-level, what were their objectives, how were they structured, etc. Now when we look at the information we have on the professionalization of the National Guard, it’s practically nil.”
Mexico’s homicide rate skyrocketed under Felipe Calderón (see last week’s newsletter) but dropped toward the end of his 2006 to 2012 administration – only to rebound in the latter two-thirds of the Peña Nieto sexenio. “The Federal Police had detentions and dismantled [criminal organizations]. If we compare the Federal Police to the National Guard, it’s like comparing a Ferrari with a broken-down Nissan Tsuru,” Rivas said.
He said of the National Guard:
“There is no evidence that the presence of the National Guard has had a positive effect in the states where it has been displaced and even less so in terms of detentions.
“The National Guard is an institution that doesn’t work … and is simply a waste of resources that will eventually end up dying a slow death on its own.”