The Limits of Mexico’s Security Strategy

Guillermo Valdés Castellanos

According to official statistics, homicides have fallen by more than 40%, which is said to be proof of the security strategy’s effectiveness, as the main perpetrators of violence have been arrested or eliminated. The operation against El Mencho became a symbol of the government’s operational capacity and political will to confront organized crime. “We’re doing very well,” government officials claim.

However, once the morning press conference is over, the contrast is stark. How can the official narrative be reconciled with these four realities: a) the brutality of the criminal group “Los Ardillos” against the mountain communities of Guerrero, shamelessly encouraged and condoned by the state government and its so-called governor, and abandoned by the National Guard; b) yesterday’s massacre in Tehuitzingo, Puebla, in which ten people were killed, as they “were allegedly attacked by armed individuals” (don’t laugh; that’s what the official statement says);

c) President Sheinbaum’s stubborn refusal to comply with the U.S. extradition request for former Governor Rocha Moya, denying any links to drug trafficking, even though it is already common knowledge in Sinaloa, in the rest of the country and much of the world, Morena’s modus operandi with organized crime in the 2021 elections—which is also on the verge of collapsing relations between the two governments. And d) the persistence of the tenacious, heroic struggle of the mothers of the disappeared to get the government to show a modicum of sensitivity and a genuine willingness to search for their more than 130,000 relatives and to provide budgetary, human, and technical resources to the prosecutors’ offices.

These four recent events are evidence of the real, harsh, insurmountable structural limits facing President Sheinbaum’s security strategy in response to the resounding and tragic failure of “hugs, not bullets.” There is no one who does not recognize the serious and well-designed efforts of Omar García Harfuch to resume actions to reduce violence. However, the inadequacy of the Security Secretary and his team’s good intentions is becoming increasingly evident. I point out four limitations:

1. Institutional design. Given AMLO’s unshakable determination to militarize public security and place the National Guard under the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena), and Sheinbaum’s decision to grant strategic leadership to the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, a dysfunctional dual command structure has emerged across the board. There is a general with experience and strategic vision, but without troops, and all the potential disputes and conflicts between the two agencies.
2. The Army’s structural inability to take charge of public security; they are soldiers, not police. The National Guard is rife with opacity and inexperience; it doesn’t even have an assigned mission; they claim to be everywhere, yet it’s as if they aren’t there at all. Shouldn’t it have a permanent presence in areas like the mountains of Guerrero and rural regions without police?
3. The terrible failure to push for the purging and strengthening of local police forces, state prosecutors’ offices, and prisons. Without that institutional framework across the entire territory, no National Guard can make a difference; federal operations, such as Operation Enjambre or the arrest of the mayor of Tequila, are spectacular, but they lack continuity because there are no state or municipal police to continue the task. Soon enough, the criminals return.
4. AMLO’s pact of complicity—maintained to this day by Sheinbaum—with the model of exchange of favors established between Morena and criminal organizations (political hegemony in exchange for territorial control) leaves García Harfuch’s efforts on the periphery of the problem, as we have seen with the state-sanctioned fuel theft and “La Barredora” in Tabasco. And it is also on the verge of causing a serious problem with the U.S., with unpredictable but grave consequences for the country.

Don’t get your hopes up too much about the figures from the morning briefing.

This piece is also published in Spanish by laaurorademexico.com

Further Reading:

Manual For Handing Over Mexico.

Intelligence for Mexico´s National Security.

Mexico’s Electoral Reform and the Business Community.

New World Order: Power, Threats, and Alliances.

The Evolution of Drug Trafficking and Politics in Mexico