Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
All military doctrines, whatever the country, agree on a central thesis. They go something like this: In the face of aggression, its duty is to respond with the lethal force necessary to eliminate the present danger. The “present danger” is eliminated with the required deadly force.
On the other hand, police forces, also in any country, have, as their sworn mission, to use all possible means to know and resolve a conflict situation and only, in extreme circumstances, to use lethal force.
Military and police are trained in different theoretical and philosophical frameworks. To put it more colloquially, the military shoot first and then ask questions (if at all), while the police ask questions and inquire first and then, if necessary, shoot.
This is relevant to the ongoing discussion in Mexico about the militarization of the police. It would seem to be a flagrant contradiction, the idea of militarizing the police. How can the two bodies be made compatible if these two logics are so different? They represent, in their own words, two different conceptual visions of the country.
As it turns out, it is indeed a contradiction that the President, so intellectually lazy, wants to solve using a decree instead of facing the challenge of understanding that contradictions are not solved by administrative action but by assuming them and living with them, taking into account their particularities.
While President Boric of Chile and President Petro of Colombia, both new leftist leaders, are proceeding to separate, legally and administratively, the police forces from the military armed forces of their respective countries, Mexico is moving in the opposite direction. Following to the letter, the militaristic theses of Latin America’s hard right, represented by Pinochet, López Obrador seeks to subordinate the police to the armed forces, transforming the police philosophy into a militaristic one. With this action, Morena joins the Latin American reaction ranks despite its distribution of money to the poor. It is simply a new right-wing modality, perhaps with a “new age” touch.
Part of the militaristic mentality that permeates the pores of the new authoritarian “new age” right-wing that governs us is the arbitrary and indiscriminate use of national security decrees to every public work and action it carries out in order not to comply with the requirements of technical or budgetary opinions that the law demands. These actions of ignoring the law are also part of the culture of militarization that the President wants to impose on the country.
Militarization is not simply having a military officer on every corner who can fire at his discretion. It is to have an intelligence apparatus watching the citizens, their acts and thoughts, to know if they are a danger to the “established order”. It is to decree that any citizen act can qualify as a national security danger. And with this, the prisons will begin to fill up with all kinds of dangerous citizens, according to military intelligence.
Just as the military were infiltrated in the group of students of Ayotzinapa, now they will be infiltrated in meetings, family gatherings, teachers’ meetings, unions, boards of directors, and government cabinet meetings. Spies everywhere will detect dissidents, questioners, and focal points opposing the truth established by the maximum leader. Even to monitor the private conduct of citizens in their homes.
This would be the practical effect of what is called militarization. And this is what Lopez Obrador proposes for the future of Mexico.
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