Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Mexico is getting armed, but it is unclear if it is to fight crime or control the opposition. It is clear, however, that integrating the National Guard into the Army is an act agreed upon between the Defense and the Executive. What is not clear is the final purpose of the merger of the armed forces.
General Luis Cresencio Sandoval now claims that the whole debate has been about extending the Army’s interference in public security activities until 2028. Strange military exclamation, when that purpose was not even included in the presidential initiative but in the proposal subsequently presented by the PRI (the party with the proven spirit to venture into the abyss). Cresencio’s statement simply adds more darkness to the mystery.
What is going on in the world of public security? As much as the President lies in his public statements, there are inescapable realities. During his presidential term, organized crime has extended its areas of influence and territorial control in a remarkable way compared to the past. International estimates indicate that more than 50% of the national territory is now under the control of organized crime or with the strong influence and presence of its actors and organizations. On the other hand, the number of intentional homicides during the first three and a half years of López Obrador has already surpassed the number of intentional homicides during the six years of Calderón. It will soon surpass the figures of the six-year term of Peña Nieto. As a result, deaths in Mexico are at their highest point, historically speaking.
Together with the number of missing persons, Mexico is a graveyard.
That is so on the side of the criminal element in Mexico. But on the authority side, the situation is just as frightening. The permissiveness of civilian and military authorities towards criminal organizations has become legendary. A fact corroborates the above. A survey conducted by the Electoral Tribunal of the Judiciary of the Federation (TEPJF) shows a popular perception: 52% of the national population considers that organized crime intervenes in elections with the permission of local, state, and federal authorities.
In addition, the popular perception, as a result of the behaviors made visible by the President of the Republic himself, that there is a de facto alliance between the Executive Power and organized crime, which would give endorsement to the intervention in the processes to elect candidates corresponding to the official party. Furthermore, the release of Chapo Guzman’s son, along with the humiliation of the Armed Forces in the process, including the revelation of the name of the military officer responsible for the operation, illustrated the level of personal commitment of the President to Chapo Guzman’s family and criminal organization.
The above leads to understanding the passivity of the Armed Forces in the face of the territorial deployment of organized crime organizations in the country, including the recent revelations about military involvement in the killing of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. There is, if not open operational complicity, at least tacit functional agreements that facilitate the free operation of organized crime in Mexico, where the role of the Armed Forces is, apparently, to “ensure and regulate” a certain order and civility among drug trafficking groups.
And for this order to be achieved, corrupting factors are present, such as the purchase of wills, especially towards elements of the prosecutors, public security agents of the municipalities and states, as well as the Armed Forces, both the National Guard, the Army, and the Navy. Millions of dollars come and go, oiling an informal but efficient system of manufacturing, transporting, and exporting a whole menu of synthetic and natural drugs to Mexico’s urban areas and the rest of the world.
From the standpoint of nationalist economic ideology, drug production may not be the most desirable of industries, but it is considered our own. That is why it is defended: because it is a purely Mexican industry. And indeed, that is why others envy our successful “drug entrepreneurs,” such as Señor Guzman. Not even Carlos Slim deserves to be called Mr. Slim. And there is the purely economic argument: an industry that generates jobs and, therefore, certain welfare in the nation. In addition, its profits spill over to other sectors that benefit from the circulation of money that otherwise would not be present in the national economy.
Nationalism and populism find in the drug industry a strategic ally, as incredible as it may seem. They consider that preventing it would be a mistake. Therefore, the role of the Armed Forces in the face of the “national drug economy” is that of a covert regulator with a “national security” task that seeks to save the country from productive collapse.
But this regulatory role establishes complicity of decisions between civilians (the President) and the Armed Forces (Secretary of Defense). It is not only complicity of operation, but it becomes complicity of interests. The President and the Secretaries of Defense and the Navy become political allies and business partners because they already have underlying agreements, some public, but many unconfessable, linked to business and free access to the public budget, without accountability and lacking all transparency.
That is why the President does not want the Armed Forces to return to the barracks. Too many political, material and financial motivations lead them to reject outright what everyone demands: to create a civilian police force to address public security problems and return the military to its constitutional role. Something so obvious and necessary goes against what they have made: a new form of political power management in Mexico, increasingly outside the rule of law and constitutional order. Their objective is to create a new political regime: a civil-military government governed by its own laws and based on extrajudicial theses, based on the justification offered by National Security as a legal statute for the “defense of the State against the attacks of its enemies”.
And who are those enemies, because we already know they are not the drug traffickers, the Armed Forces, the President, or his party? The enemies are those who question militarization and who expose the existence of an attempt to establish a civil-military regime in Mexico outside the law. In the President’s words, they are those who show “their level of cretinism, hypocrisy, suddenly those who bet on the use of force, tenacious violators of human rights, become paladins of justice, defenders of human rights, they are reverend phonies…endorsing the falsehood and the politicking of conservatism”.
“Those are the ones; those are the ones who go to the firing squad”, the President seems to be demanding. And his words may become orders.
Returning to the initial question, is the inclusion of the National Guard in the Army to fight organized crime, or is it to control and repress the opposition? As always, you, my dear readers, have the best answer.
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