Six Steps to a Civilian-Military Regime.

, December 30, 2023

Ricardo Pascoe Pierce

The balance of the first leftist (?) government in Mexico is its intention to break the constitutional order. The President has dedicated himself to undoing the regime of the three branches of the republican State to change it for a regime of civilian-military rule without counterweights. He defies the law, ignores or attacks any opinion contrary to his own, and reveres the rule that promotes the lack of transparency in public treasury management.

Is establishing a civilian-military government an act of love for the people, despite having promised, in his campaign, to return the military to its barracks? AMLO received many votes for promising love of neighbor and offering to return the military to their barracks.

Revealing his essential lie, he is establishing a civilian-military regime after offering the opposite. It is a process still unfinished but advancing rapidly. It is based not on the love of neighbors but on social polarization, seasoned with enough hatred to anticipate severe social conflicts.

So why did he radically change and now govern with the military? Essentially because, it gives him a force of imposition that he did not have at the beginning of his administration. What are the reasons and operations that support his authoritarian project, even under the guise of a supposed democracy?

First, he considers that to govern as he wants, he must eliminate all legal restrictions imposed by the national legal framework. This explains the phrase, “Don’t tell me that the law is the law”. Partnering with the military makes it easier to evade many laws, environmental for example, by declaring the participation of the military in the construction of public works as matters of national security, even if it is a mere pretext for not complying with the law. Thus, it can destroy large, forested areas of the Yucatan Peninsula without having to submit Environmental Impact Assessments (MIA) in the many cases where the law requires this type of study before authorizing a project, such as Dos Bocas or the Mayan Train, to cite just two cases.

Secondly, the close alliance of his government with the Armed Forces offered him an ample source of cheap labor, almost semi-slave labor, to build part of his works. That is to say, he considers the foot soldiers as his patrimony as President of the Republic, and they can represent a cost reduction to the public treasury by giving them the task of constructing the emblematic works of this six-year term.

Thirdly, it allows him to weave complicity for corruption with the Armed Forces’ high command. He turns the military commanders into businessmen, using their relatives as “new businessmen” apt to get their hands on succulent contracts. Between the children of the President and the children of the generals, Mexico will witness the emergence of a new bourgeoisie born from the bureaucratic caste of the State. This complicity’s obvious intention is to transform it into mafia loyalty. Corruption is the egg of the serpent.

Fourthly, being able to declare that everything the Armed Forces touches is protected by the National Security Law, which legally allows evading any transparency in the use and disposition of public resources and accountability. It also allows ignoring or bypassing the inquisitorial eye of the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information (INAI) and not answering its requests to respond to citizens’ questions. AMLO’s absolute refusal to be accountable is reflected in the recently published Global Rule of Law Index; Mexico fell to 135th place out of 139 in terms of corruption. Only four countries in the world are considered more corrupt than Mexico: Uganda, Cameroon, Cambodia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fact that corruption has flourished in Lopez Obrador’s Mexico explains, to a large extent, his complicity with the Armed Forces.

Rule of Law Index 2023 (Insights)

Fifth, he is building new strategic allies in his alliance with drug trafficking factions. Herein lies the most perverse piece of AMLO’s governance model. He intends to extend the power of drug trafficking to the highest levels of public power in his six-year term and the next. The slogan “abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not bullets) is not marketing. It is the most important political statement of his government. He intends to give governability to Mexico in close alliance and coordination with organized crime, but especially with drug trafficking and preferably with the Sinaloa Cartel. For this agreement to be effective, it must necessarily be tripartite: President – Armed Forces – drug trafficking. To ensure the discipline of all these actors, the National Guard must be under the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) command to prevent it from pursuing a different policy concerning drug trafficking.

Finally, and in sixth place, the Armed Forces are an ally whose services could be required in case of losing the elections next June. It would even be the propitious moment to impose, now completely and in all its form, the new civilian-military regime, disrupting the legislative and judicial powers, turning them into mud actors in the management of public power. Or even disappearing or transforming these fundamental organs for the functioning of a democratic Republic.

These six steps are the ongoing trajectory that AMLO is building to recreate the power of the State in Mexico in his own image and likeness. With this, he intends to have the power to impose his trans-sexennial political project.

Obviously, it will be necessary to transform the Constitution. To do so, he seeks to achieve a qualified majority in the next Congress. Hence, the opposition has the difficult but possible task of winning the Presidency of the Republic, the majority in the national Congress, and Mexico City to stop the project of the establishment of a People’s Republic of Mexico.

There are six steps that, one by one, and then all together, build the profile of the authoritarian regime that AMLO offers, and they will be on the ballot next June 2. We will be summoned to decide between authoritarianism and freedom.