Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The Mexican military faces a loss of prestige today as never before since that fateful October 2, 1968. After the massacre at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, it took decades and hundreds of DN-3 plans for the Mexican people to believe in their Armed Forces again. That vile act of Mexican military forces and its repercussions have accompanied them for years with questioning, suspicion, and repudiation.
They were recovering their prestige and good name when they just lost it due to the ambition of a few politicians and generals. Tlatelolco and Ayotzinapa are the crucibles that define the character of the strategic alliances of two Mexican Presidents with the Armed Forces.
But how to understand the crises of the military in 1968 and 2022? First, through the prism of the same predominant political ideology of the party in power on both dates. The Mexican economy aspired to grow inward, without foreign participation, under an isolationist idea. The prevailing notion was one of sovereignty and independent subsistence in economic matters. Politically, the central aspiration was to ensure the absolute hegemony of the single party. The ideal situation was that there would be only one ideological current in the country and would be guided by an official opinion on nationhood, sovereignty, and a closed economy.
In this context, the dominant ideology did not hesitate to use the Armed Forces to impose its order when critical voices arose from the University and the intelligentsia. The army served faithfully to kill students who protested against the lack of democracy and freedoms in Mexico—and paid with decades of social shame.
Today’s parallelism is reflected in the political-ideological coincidences between Díaz Ordaz and López Obrador. The current President aspires for a self-sufficient economy in terms of energy and food supply. It is an aspiration that is accompanied by sovereigntist and isolationist thinking. It is an ideal that considers, as it was thought in the sixties, that it is better to be alone than to coexist with others, which means resolving the conflicts that arise when walking together.
Isolationism is today a utopia. Utopian thinking, however singular it may be, always faces the challenges of the real world, where one has to choose between one disadvantage and another. The utopia of the 4T nestles within it a rejection of modernity and the changes of the technological revolution. The hacking of the army, and most likely of PEMEX and CFE, comes from the conviction that spending on security is superfluous.
Diaz Ordaz and Lopez Obrador conceive the Armed Forces as an instrument against their enemies and then thrown into the dustbin of history again.
The use of the Armed Forces by President López Obrador is a two-way street. He uses them, and they use them. The hacking has confirmed this. The fact that the President entrusts information about his health to the military, and no one else, is a sign of his trust in the military (and his distrust of the people). But, at the same time, the fact that the generals are the keepers of his most intimate secrets gives them enormous power over him. The capacity to blackmail and pressure the President has practically no limit.
Likely, the most important secrets are not about his medical condition (although he had hidden the seriousness of his health condition) but about matters such as his relationship with organized crime and his instructions on how to manage a tolerant relationship with the cartels, the manipulation and modification of electoral results in favor of Morena and the personal businesses of the President, his family members and those of high military commanders.
The drivers of the military’s discredit emanate from these new conditions. The central point is that they gladly accepted the poisoned apple offered to them by President López Obrador. The poison comes from the offer of economic and political power to the military leadership in exchange for their entire enlistment in the political project of the Fourth Transformation.
Enrolling in the 4T project means making pacts with organized crime, stopping any opposition advance, spying against opinion leaders who are not of the presidential affection, supporting electoral frauds without lifting a finger in favor of legality, and allowing corruption in the high spheres of their own and the 4T.
Both the Secretary of SEDENA and the commander of the National Guard have been in Morena’s partisan events. In exchange for that party affiliation, the generals are “safe” from citizen scrutiny by the grace of the National Security decrees that allow them to spend public money hand over fist without being accountable. In other words, a public spending bubble has been created where transparency is non-existent.
This October 2 is a remembrance that the military killed students in cold blood, whose number has never been counted with certainty, and thus provoked a political process that dominated Mexican society and finally ended up transforming the entire electoral system.
In 1968 the Armed Forces were used by an isolationist president and promoter of a State monopoly capitalist economy. There were no alternative proposals.
In 2022 they are used in the same way by the presidential power. But there are significant differences with the Díaz Ordaz era. He had a poorly organized society; there were no opposition parties, and the agreement with the United States was total.
Today, the situation is very different. There is a functional, solid, and mobilizing opposition, no cozy relationship with the United States, and the generals are not the passive sheep they were then. Today they have political and economic power, and they want more in exchange for their actions in favor of presidential fantasies and activities. It is exposed that just as they assassinated students in 1968, they also assassinated students in Ayotzinapa.
The Armed Forces continue with the same ethos of repression. They kill students and make pacts with the narcos, then and now. In 1968 and 2022, they responded to Presidents who endorsed their conduct. Anchored in a common ideology, Diaz Ordaz and Lopez Obrador considered necessary the destruction of the opposition and used the generals to achieve their goals. What are 54 years of distance if they continue dreaming of the same thing?
The conversion of the Armed Forces into the propagandists of the 4T has a very high cost for the military institution. Social rejection is growing due to militarization, information about their participation in the murder of Ayotzinapa students, corruption within the government and the Armed Forces, and the deliberate use of polarization as a pretext for intimidation and repression against opponents. In short, this is the story of a ruler who wants to create a civil-military regime based on economic and political interests anchored in corruption.
Just as the repression of October 2, 1968, marked the beginning of the gestation of independent and democratic forces in Mexico, we must ensure that the authoritarian drift in 2022 gives impetus to democratic forces whose agenda is the consolidation of freedoms and the rule of law in Mexico. The challenge is great but achievable.
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