Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The hacking of the Army’s servers has put the national spotlight on the military corps and its most important activities, offering an intimate look at its philias and phobias. The hacking is thus an exercise in demystifying an organization previously revered and now viewed with suspicion and discredit. Its aura of sanctity was destroyed in the blink of an eye.
From the number of documents released by the enigmatic Guacamaya group, we will have reports and scandals of all kinds about the Armed Forces and their intervention in public life for the next two or three years. In other words, this hacking will color the events of the last years of López Obrador’s six-year term.
The hacking crisis is a creation of the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) itself. Obviously, the military authorities did not take the threats to the security of their information systems seriously. They did not put the necessary money into security and tracing the origins of their computer systems to avoid this kind of debacle.
Who is happy with this crisis? Most likely organized crime. There is enough information in the disclosed data for organized crime organizations to detect their informants, the traitors within their organizations who inform the Army of their plans and actions. How else would one know who a cartel would kill the next day if not for an Army spy within the criminal organization? Presumably, the “forces of order” did not stop the assassination to avoid giving away the presence of their informant. That informant has surely passed on, given what was published in the hacks.
And like them, many are probably in the same situation: moles placed in criminal organizations whose secret identity is essential to stay alive. There is the example of the soldier placed inside the rural school of Ayotzinapa whose life was sacrificed not to reveal the degree of information the Army possessed about some students’ political and/or criminal activities.
Surely Army spies are infiltrating feminist, human rights, and environmental groups, not to mention journalists, opposition political parties, and social organizations considered “subversive” by law enforcement, as revealed by the hacked documents.
It is impossible not to recall the documents in Trump’s possession containing information on active agents in danger of losing their lives if their role in the espionage world were to become known. It is not a game. Lives depend on the secrecy of their data.
Yet the President takes it lightly. For him, it is a joke. “We have nothing to hide,” he says. The President is wrong (or he wants to deceive us). They have a lot to hide, and several of them know it. Moreover, as time goes by, more sensitive and confidential information will come to light.
When Guacamaya hacked the files of the Chilean Army, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces took it seriously, assumed his responsibility, and resigned. In Mexico, no one ever resigns. The Secretary of SEDENA is still doing his business and does not contemplate any dignified action. He prefers to keep his head in the sand, like an ostrich, until something impossible to ignore happens. It even orders an investigation of the uniformed officers who freed Ovidio for not following the case’s orders. Here the issue is easy: it was the President.
Neither the death of his spies worries him. Nor does it bother the President. But the Army has a problem. It is living days of discredit and a severe decline in its credibility. Today, the Mexican Army has joined the ranks of politicians and parties discredited and repudiated by most citizens.
The Army is facing the abyss of its future as it has not done since October 2, 1968. Such is the size of its discredit. And it is a product of Guacamaya and its refusal to abandon the path of militarization, joining corruption.
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