Supreme Court reverses AMLO's militarization of public security
Justices rule National Guard must remain under civilian command as outlined in the constitution, provoking another conflict for the court with AMLO.
Mexico’s Supreme Court overturned AMLO’s plans for placing the National Guard under army command, drawing a sharp rebuke from the president who has leaned heavily on the armed forces throughout his administration for tasks ranging from public security to building big infrastructure projects to managing national parks.
The court ruled 8-3 against legislation approved last year, which assigns the National Defence Secretariat (SEDENA) control over the National Guard, arguing the constitution clearly states the militarized police force must operate under civilian leadership.
The episode drew AMLO’s ire, while deepening rifts between the populist president and the Supreme Court – which the president has accused of betraying him, in spite of his appointing four of the 11 justices. It also set back his plans for militarizing public security – something AMLO and many on the Mexican left had railed against since then-president Felipe Calderón launched a crackdown and drug cartels in December 2006.
AMLO, as the Mexican president is called, welcomed the court decision with his usual vitriol, while accusing the court of acting in a partisan manner. He ranted at his morning press conference:
“Eight ministers of the Supreme Court, with the exception of three, acted in a partisan manner yesterday and not with legal criteria, but politically, defending the old practices of the authoritarian and corrupt regime.”
AMLO proposed the creation of the National Guard as a militarized police in 2019, which would replace the Federal Police – which he considered irredeemably corrupted for being formed during the 2006-2012 administration of former President Felipe Calderón and overseen by Genaro García Luna. The latter was convicted in a New York court earlier this year on charges of taking payoffs from the Sinaloa Cartel – a case AMLO has highlighted at every opportunity, even as he decries U.S. justice pursuing Mexican drug cartels and corrupt public officials. (More below.)
The new force was conceived as an amalgam of military police and the existing Federal Police under the Security and Citizen Protection Secretariat. But the president proposed a constitutional reform last year for putting the National Guard under SEDENA command – a measure failing to receive the two-thirds support in Congress. He later presented secondary legislation proposing the same, which ultimately passed a Congress where his MORENA party and its allies have majorities.
Rupture with the Court
In an overt attempt at drama and ginning up outrage, AMLO announced he would sever institutional ties with the Supreme Court – apparently failing to grasp the concept of separation of powers. He interpreted a meeting between Piña and SSPC secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez as “negotiations,” even though the court president was simply asking what time frame the force wanted for the ruling to take effect.
AMLO tried turning the request into a scandal, saying he gave instructions for his cabinet to “not even answer the phone” when the court called. His supporters, meanwhile, set up a protest camp outside the Supreme Court, next to the National Palace in central Mexico City.
Supreme Court plagiarism
The president had been openly pulling for another justice to be elected court president: Jazmín Esquivel Mossa, who he had appointed and whose husband had been a prominent contractor while he was Mexico City mayor between 2000 and 2005. But Esquivel was rocked by accusations prior to Christmas that she plagiarized her 1986 undergraduate law school thesis from FES-Aragón, part of the UNAM system. Spanish newspaper El País subsequently discovered parts of here doctoral degree from the Anáhuac University were also plagiarized.
AMLO has doggedly defended Esquivel, insisting at one of his morning press conferences in February after her second plagiarism scandal broke, “It’s no longer a story,” and later claiming, “it’s all politicized.”
Attack on the court
AMLO has made no secret of his dislike for Piña – nor his fondness for her predecessor, Arturo Zaldivar. (The president’s partisans attempted to extend the four-year term of the court president to 2024, coinciding with AMLO leaving office.) He welcomed her election by the court by stating, “It’s very evident that president Norma Piña has always voted against the initiatives which we have defended.”
The presidency continued its jawboning of the court on May 7, issuing a Sunday morning statement that warned the court would be undermining Congress by voting against AMLO’s so-called “Plan B” – an attempt to gut the National Electoral Institute and impede its ability to organize elections. The statement said of the court:
“As a power which is derived without popular legitimacy, the SCJN must not restrict the powers that (are) conceded to the legislative power to regulate the process of the elaboration of norms so long long as they are the result of the will of the majority of the members of Congress. Doing so will violate the principle of the division of powers and the balance that must exist between them.”
Court to vote on so-called ‘Plan B’
The court has rejected calls from the presidency to suspend its deliberations of Plan B, scheduled for May 8. A project from one of the justices, which will be voted on by the 11-member court, proposed invalidating Plan B for procedural issues in Congress. (Plan B was presented following an electoral reform proposed by AMLO, which would have put members of the electoral institute to a popular vote, failing to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority in Congress.
Writing in the newspaper El Universal, former Supreme Court Justice José Ramón Cossío Díaz, said the court during the years of one-party rule followed an informal policy of “validation” (convalidación). The practice, he said, “Argued that since the majority had finally acted and cast its favourable vote [in Congress], the irregularities committed throughout the procedural process had been validated.”
The practice has largely been abandoned by the court in recent years, he added, explaining, “The thesis, so simplistic, could not … resist the dynamics of political pluralism in legislative representation.”
For his part, AMLO has proposed a “Plan C,” for the electoral institute: electing a MORENA mega majority in 2024, which would present an electoral reform when seated in September of that year, 30 days before he leaves office. The president has previously called for mega majorities – such as the 2021 midterms – but fell far short with his MORENA party on reaching a majority with the help of its allies: the PT and Green Party.
AMLO FINALLY DISCOVERS FENTANYL – IN MEXICO
López Obrador has continued his tough talk toward the United States, while feigning ignorance over the origins of fentanyl. On May 5, he said the Navy had discovered a shipment of fentanyl at the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, which had originated in China.
“We now have the proof,” AMLO claimed at his morning presser. “A laboratory analysis has been done, and, very respectfully, we’re going to send this information with the same request [to China] that they help inform us when these chemicals are sent, and if possible, that they impede these chemicals leaving their ports.”
AMLO was referring to the April letter he send Chinese President Xi Jinping, asking for help with fentanyl – something the Mexican leader said he was doing as a favour to U.S. lawmakers. China responded by saying no such fentanyl trafficking occurred.
López Obrador has insisted that fentanyl doesn’t come from Mexico, even though the DEA lists the Sinaloa Cartel Jalisco New General Cartel as the main sources of fentanyl arriving in the United States.
US ‘Politicking’
AMLO on Thursday insisted the tough talk toward Mexico on the fentanyl issue was little more than “politicking” in the United States ahead of the 2024 elections – with Mexico serving as a “piñata,” not unlike past elections. He commented:
“We, of course, are helping the United States government so that there is no drug trafficking. However, they want all the blame to fall on our country, and we consider it unfair and we don’t deserve such treatment.”
He combined the griping about the United States with the secretary of the navy dismissing a report from Sky News, which showed the inner workings of a fentanyl lab in the state of Sinaloa.
AMLO teed up the supposed take down of the Sky News segment with the comments:
“If we let this go, then another report appears, then another, then another, and their propaganda for political purposes will harm us.
“So, the best thing is to inform with the truth, the straight-ahead truth, so that this political campaign and bad faith can be counteracted.”
AMLO denies US permission to enter Mexican airspace
The before (May 3), AMLO let slip at his morning presser that the Pentagon had advised their Mexican counterparts of a spy balloon over Mexican territory. According to his account:
“They called from the Pentagon to ask permission because they wanted to fly over our airspace with planes and high-tech military drones because they detected a balloon that came from Hawaii and was going to pass over Mexico, and they assured it was an Asian balloon. I don’t want to meddle in these things.
“So, the response was no. No, we’re not permitting these aircraft and these drones access to our airspace. We’re going to come to an agreement: send up the information and we have the equipment to follow them.”
Veracruz smackdown
López Obrador saved his sharpest words for a trip to Veracruz, where he led commemoration of the 1914 U.S. occupation of the port city. There, he raised the spectre of invasion, while sparing any outrage for organized crime – the reason for talk of U.S. intervention. Flanked by the secretaries of defence and the navy, the president told the assembled sailors:
“There is this talk in the United States of intervening and confronting organized crime, narcotics traffickers, treating them like terrorists and for these reasons they’re going to come and ‘help us,’ ‘support us,’ to confront organized crime.
“From here in the port of Veracruz we tell to listen and listen good: we will not accept any intervention.
“In the case that it’s required to defend our territory, defend our sovereignty, we must not forget that … these are different times. Mexico has moral authority, has the backing of the majority of the world’s countries and has the force of the people, the force of public opinion. No foreign government would dare to step foot in our territory. And if they did, it will not be only the sailors and soldiers who will defend Mexico, all Mexicans will defend Mexico.”
SEDENA ACCUSED OF SPYING – AMLO INSISTS ITS THE REVERSE
In the prelude to the Veracruz bluster, AMLO openly complained of the DEA infiltrating Los Chapitos – the Sinaloa Cartel faction operated by El Chapo’s sons, who were recently indicted by US prosecutors.
The president followed up his complaining about the DEA by speaking of Pentagon spying against the army and navy – the product of documents in the Discord Leaks. He threatened to curtail cooperation and claimed Mexico had to “care” for the army’s information – which was hacked by a cooperative known as Guacamaya.
AMLO spoke ominously at his April 18 presser, stating:
“We’re going to care for the information from the secretary of the navy and (SEDENA) because we’re the object of Pentagon spying and many media outlets in Mexico are filtering information that the DEA is giving them.”
Pegasus spyware
On the same day AMLO spoke of the armed forces being a victim of espionage, the New York Times released an investigation showing Mexico’s military had infected the phones of lawyers from a Jesuit-run human rights centre with Pegasus spy software. The report showed how Mexico’s military was the first client for Israel’s NSO Group and how SEDENA has remained a trusted customer – even as AMLO denies any such spying exists under his administration. The Times wrote:
“Mexico’s military is not only Pegasus’ longest-running client, the four people say, but it has also targeted more cellphones with the spyware than any other government agency in the world.”
The Jesuit-sponsored Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center in Mexico City has long crossed paths with the military, working with victims of human rights abuses for more than 50 years. The military previously tried infecting the phones of three staff in 2017, but the software wasn’t activated – unlike now as newer versions of Pegasus are no-click.
Army retaliation for Ayotzinapa activism
But the infecting of the phones came as the army attempted to undermine the investigation into the 2014 disappearances of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa college, who were attacked by police acting in cahoots with criminals. The role of the army, which has a base near the site of the attack, has long been questioned.
Centro Pro represented families of the missing students. The attacks with the spy software came as the army worked to subvert the findings of a truth commission, which raised questions on its actions (and inaction). As the Times noted: SENDA was the only Mexican agency with access to Pegasus at the time of the spying on Centro Pro.
No change under AMLO
Centro Pro filed a criminal complaint after the first attempt to infiltrate its phones. The centre’s director Santiago Aguirre says they did so “with the hope that under a new government promising to control the army, not to spy [on citizens] and to be democratic, things were going to be different.”
But the expansion of spying under the military against targets like Centro Pro confirms the depth of AMLO’s dependence on the military. It also shows how civil society’s previously high hopes for AMLO have evaporated as the president casts his lot with the military and shows a deep suspicion on groups representing victims of violence, along with environmentalists and feminist collectives. Aguirre told America Magazine:
“With these new espionage cases, it provokes enormous desperation and sadness. It’s a demonstration of how the promises of change in Mexico have not been kept and how the army is out of control and represents a threat to human rights as always.”
IMMIGRATION DEAL STRUCK WITH US?
Mexico and the United States struck a deal ahead of the May 11 end of Title 42 – with Mexico agreeing to continue accepting migrants from four countries (Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua) turned away from the U.S. border. A similar deal was originally agreed up in January with the U.S. also accepting migrants from those countries through legal channels provided they had U.S. sponsors and hadn’t stepped foot in Panama or Mexico.
The agreement contained familiar, but vague commitments to improve development in Central America and crackdown on human trafficking. Mexico “recognized the great value of the regional processing centres,” the United States planned for Guatemala and Colombia, and the United States, according to the Mexican government readout, “reaffirmed its commitment to receive more than 100,000 persons from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador under a family reunification scheme announced previously.”
The deal was announced after a May 2 visit to Mexico by U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall. AMLO used the moment to again push USAID to stop funding groups he considers “opposition” – namely anti-graft group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity and press freedom group Article 19. The U.S. government declined to pull the funding.
Caravan forms ahead of May 11
What Title 42 brings remains uncertain. Migrants appear to be heading north in advance of the date, however. Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) reported dispersing a caravan originating in Tapachula, Chiapas, April 27 by offering travel documents to 1,186 participants.
One activist following the convoy tweeted that the INM had issued visas allowing migrants to remain in Mexico for 45 days. But, unlike previous visas given to caravan travellers, which only were valid in the states were issued, “migrants are being told they can transit all of Mexico, a complete change from 180 days ago,” according to the activist.
The activist also observed that the visas were issued following interior minister Adán Augusto López stating April 24 in AMLO’s morning press conference:
“The federal government seeks to guarantee nothing more than their free transit through the national territory, that they are very well attended to in terms of food, in terms of health prevention.”
The activist noted: “As the end of Title 42 approaches, the negotiations between the U.S. & MX are clearly in FULL SWING.”
Mexican immigration leniency?
Father Julio López, director of the Mexican bishops’ conference’s migrant ministry, confirmed similar details in an interview with this newsletter. López noted, “There has been an increase in the population moving toward the northern border (of Mexico).”
López attributed the increasing flow migrants to the fallout of the March 27 fire in a Mexican immigration detention facility in Ciudad Juárez, which claimed 40 lives. He said:
“It seems that the National Institute of Migration is making things a little more flexible … with the intention of calming down things … and is issuing migrants with permits for 45 days. They are delivering them very quickly. They are making it easier for them to travel to the northern border, so we are already perceiving bottlenecks of people at the northern border who are waiting for what will happen on May 11.”
TAMAULIPAS EXPLODES
Northern Tamaulipas state suffered spasms of violence reminiscent of the early 2010s, when a split between the incumbent Gulf Cartel and its former armed-wing Los Zetas plunged the state into chaos. Social media reports suggest the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) is entering the state, but encountering resistance from factions of the Gulf Cartel not already aligned with the CJNG. CÓDIGO MX described the fight as:
“CDG-Metros commanded by ‘el Primito’ allied with CJNG vs Zetas Vieja Escuela, CDG faction Reynosa, Río Bravo and CDG Escorpiones and Ciclones de Matamoros.”
The violence erupted less than seven months after MORENA Gov. Américo Villareal took office – allegedly with the backing of the Cartel de Noreste (dominant in Nuevo Laredo), which a leaked US embassy cable accused of pumping $7 million into his campaign. (Villarreal denies the accusations in the embassy cable.)
Videos circulating on social media covering Tamaulipas security issues have showed the mobilization of sicarios – often in vehicles decked out in homemade armouring known as “monstruos”.
Fighting has been reported across the state with the CJNG issuing a statement that it had established a presence in southern Tamaulipas, where it promised to “clean up” the region and imposed an 11 p.m. curfew. Some sources considered the statement false, however. (The coastal city of Tampico had previously been the second-safest city in Mexico, according to a survey from state statistics service INEGI.
Video the previous day showed the CJNG taking control of San Fernando, a strategic crossroads connecting southern Tamaulipas with Matamoros and Reynosa, with a convoy of at least 20 vehicles. Narcobloqueos, with hijacked vehicles used to block traffic, were reported the same day in Matamoros and Reynosa.
State security secretary Gen. Sergio Chávez admonished drivers to stay off the roads at night.
At least 16 narcobloqueos occurred again May 2, according to SEDENA in Matamoros, Reynosa, and San Fernando. One of hijacked vehicles in Matamoros involved a school bus with children being forced off by gunmen. Classes were canceled across the region. Gun battles also broke out near the Pharr bridge, which connects Reynosa with Pharr, Texas.
AMLO: It’s all political
Authorities have preferred to downplay the attack or cry conspiracy. Villarreal insisted normalcy had returned to the state and claimed that there was “an open attempt by groups of politicians from the past, who, utilizing social networks in a perverse way, look to confuse and disinform the public on the state and national level.”
Journalist Luis Cardona, tweeted a now-deleted TikTok video in which the Tamaulipas state prosecutor was captured stating: the clashes took place between the Gulf Cartel, Scorpions, and the Panthers. The CNJG had no participation, according to the prosecutor.
President Andrés Manuel López also cried conspiracy, stating at his May 2 press conference:
“Since the day before yesterday, all this about Tamaulipas. It’s now been 15 days that you’ve been carrying on about there being instability in Tamaulipas, that violence has returned to Tamaulipas, that previously, when Gov. Cabeza de Vaca was there, peace prevailed, right? It started to capture my attention because there’s a famous phrase in Tamaulipas: ‘On whose part?’ (¿De parte de quién?) "In politics, when things like that happen, atypical, the question is always: ‘On whose behalf?’
“It’s how when you want to know who committed a crime, what is the motive of the crime, it’s recommended you follow the money. Hence, on whose behalf in Tamaulipas? … It’s because there’s a political attack against Gov. Américo Villarreal.
“I’m not saying there aren’t problems with insecurity in Tamaulipas. Clearly there are. But don’t you see how you responded to me now? And Tamaulipas? And Tamaulipas?”
Tamaulipas gov: Don’t talk about violence
Villarreal later attributed the violence to the usual standby for Mexico: politicians: “adjustments” in the groups operating in the state. Villarreal said in a May 3 press conference: “These are groups that have been operating in Tamaulipas for some time and then there are disagreements or splits within and there are shows of force between them to maintain their presence.”
The governor also resorted to the old strategy of exhorting the population to speak well of the state and refrain from spreading information on the violence in Tamaulipas. He told the media: “Let’s not give this more resonance, even though it offends us, so not to cancel the opportunities for Tamaulipas to continue having economic development.”
‘No plan’ for fighting crime
The eruption of violence in Tamaulipas followed a familiar pattern of insecurity rising following a change of government on the state level. But Francisco Rivas, president of the National Citizen Observatory, which monitors security issues, told Radio Formula that Villarreal came to office without a plan of action – despite Tamaulipas’s long history of insecurity. He recalled from the campaign:
“We asked the now-governor, then candidate, to tell us his security plan and the truth is that he couldn’t express anything because evidently they didn’t have a security plan. … (This) doesn’t seem like a political matter, rather the natural result of a government that doesn’t have any idea of what it wants.”
With former PAN governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca – who has floated plans for pursuing the presidency after MORENA unsuccessfully tried to impeach him – Rivas recalled:
“When you spoke to Cabeza de Vaca, he could explain to you, specifically when a criminal event occurred, why such violence occurred. And he explained why in that area in particular, and from there, he made decisions. So if you ask me if there was a strategy before, yes. But today there isn’t.”
AMLO THROTTLES TRANSPARENCY INSTITUTE
AMLO has long taken a dim view of Mexico’s autonomous institutions – such as the INE, which operates at arm’s length from the government. He rails often against autonomous institutions as a waste of money – prompting a sense that he his criticisms of ineffectiveness are really a stalking horse for getting his hands on their budgets and public trusts (and putting the money toward his prestige projects.)
The president has been hobbling the transparency institute (known as INAI) of late, accusing it of profligate spending and failing to stop corruption in past administrations. He proposed in late April that the INAI disappear and that the Federal Auditor’s Office (which belongs to Congress) replace it.
AMLO has already crippled the INAI by vetoing the naming of members to its board – effectively leaving it inoperable.
Interior minister: don’t respond to information requests
INAI operates in Mexico as an equivalent to the FOIA in the United States. In the case that parts of the government refuse to provide information, INAI can order the information to be turned over. But the federal government has stopped complying with requests for information, according to INAI commissioner, Julieta del Río, who says interior minister Adán Augusto López has ordered federal ministries to stop turning over information.
AMLO has accused the INAI of “simulating” the fight against corruption – tapping into his long-promoted narrative that nothing positive happened prior to his taking the presidency in 2018. But the INAI (originally IFAI) has helped blow the lid off of some of Mexico’s biggest scandals such as the Estafa Maestra, in which shell companies were used to steal 7.6 billion pesos in public funds, and the Casa Blanca – where the then-first lady Angelica Rivera bought a mansion from a crony contractor. Journalists also used INAI searches in its investigation showing one of AMLO’s sons living in a mansion in Houston belonging to an executive with a Pemex contractor.
Somewhat ironically, del Río, the INAI commissioner, quoted from one of AMLO’s books, in which the then-presidential candidate used INAI requests to prove the value of the pensions of former presidents – one of his longtime populist tropes.
More transparency with fewer prosecutions
The president’s criticisms of the INAI for failing to prove and punish corruption mischaracterized the institute’s role in society, according the INAI itself. Anti-corruptions advocates point to an unfortunate irony: the advent of the INAI has led to graft being exposed like never before. But that graft went unpunished as always – a product of poor prosecutorial practices and a lack of political will to construct an anti-corruption system – fuelling a sense that corruption was worse than ever and only getting worse.