Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Impunity runs through the bloodied veins of the massacre in Iguala of 43 students from the rural school in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. During the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, military participation in the killings was concealed. And now it seems that something similar is happening, although in a different context, in the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
From the beginning of the conflict, the parents of the missing students – probably killed by the complicit action of drug traffickers, civilian authorities, and the military – denounced the complicity of the military detachment in the area. The military were protected by the Attorney General of the Republic, Jesus Murillo Karam, who offered the interpretation of the facts of the so-called “historical truth”, putting the military barracks in safekeeping.
The parents never agreed with this interpretation. And Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador rode on the criticism made by the parents. For years he campaigned against the Peña Nieto government and its “historical truth”, denouncing the “obvious” military participation in the events. It was one of the central offerings of his electoral platform in 2018. The promise was made: if he became president, he would create a truth commission that would open all the case files and expose, before public opinion, all the facts and name those who were responsible, with criminal charges on the side.
What was not in the script of López Obrador’s government, at least publicly, was that he would create a strategic alliance between the military and the President of the Republic to ensure the continuity of his government. It is not known precisely when the decision was made to create the de facto civil-military government, but today it is a fait accompli. So much so that the General, Secretary of National Defense, is giving speeches of an explicitly political and partisan nature. Something like this had not happened since the forties when the last government headed by a general ended and the principle of loyalty and neutrality of the Armed Forces before any civilian government was established.
The intervention of the military caste does not only occur in the economy, where it has the veil of impunity due to the National Security Decree, which allows the military authorities to hide all information on contracts, awards, costs, and expenses, thus eliminating any hint of transparency. Their intervention also transits through politics, where the army and the National Guard openly participate in meetings of the official Morena party.
When the recent report on the Ayotzinapa massacre was presented, all alarms sounded in the National Palace. More than twenty military personnel, including a general, have been directly named in the murder of the students and hiding their corpses inside the Iguala military barracks. These revelations represent a direct challenge to López Obrador’s campaign promise to act against all those responsible without regard.
But his campaign promise goes against the strategic alliance with the Armed Forces that the President has established and that he obviously prioritizes as a central piece to stay in power. It seems that the President believes that without this strategic alliance with the military, his government would collapse.
Is his government so fragile and weak? The President must think that impunity is necessary to save his own political and personal future. For the time being, he prefers to pay the political cost of publicly breaking his commitment offered to the parents of transparency and punishment of those responsible in exchange for maintaining his alliance with the military, the last dike of containment to the fall of his inoperative 4th transformation.
Mexico is discovering that it has a weakened President whose future is trapped by the support the military can offer him. This explains the reason for militarization. What will be the cost of democracy and liberties that Mexicans will have to pay to sustain AMLO’s fragile government?
[email protected]
@rpascoepgmail-com
Further Reading: