« The proposal does not aim to militarize the country. (…) We don’t want an authoritarian state “, repeats for days the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (“AMLO”), during his daily press conferences. However, the Senate approved, on Friday, September 9, a series of laws which give the army control of the National Guard, previously under civilian mandate. The reform of this public security body, created in 2019 by AMLO (elected in 2018), provoked an outcry from human rights defenders who denounced a “Militarization of Mexico”.
This final vote, at second reading, is arousing fierce protest when AMLO had promised, during its 2018 presidential campaign, to “send the soldiers back to their barracks”. The following year, the center-left president launched his new national guard, under the civilian aegis of the Ministry of Public Security, aiming, in time, to replace the army, deployed by his predecessors to fight drug cartels. . But this security corps remains, three years later, composed mainly of soldiers, now coming under the administrative and operational control of the army.
More than 2,300 dead in August
A flip-flop justified by AMLO in view of the ever-worsening security crisis. The ongoing war cartels are waging for control of drug routes into the United States has resulted in 2,304 died in August. The carnage is dizzying: halfway through AMLO’s six-year mandate, 109,000 assassinations have been counted, almost double the murders (63,800) recorded during the first three years of his predecessor, Enrique Peña’s mandate. Nieto (2012-2018).
After the vote of the deputies, on September 3, the national guard reform project was confirmed by a Senate dominated by the party of AMLO, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and its allies. In an electric atmosphere, the opposition senators denounced the risks of an explosion of violence linked to an increased presence of the army. AMLO has deployed 150,000 soldiers on the territory, almost triple the military manpower allocated to security during the presidency of Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), criticized for having involved the army in the fight against drug trafficking. A strategy pursued by his successors, Mr Peña Nieto and, now, AMLO himself.
In the days leading up to the vote, hundreds of Mexicans protested outside the Senate in Mexico City against a “military national guard”. A protest supported by Edith Olivares Ferreto, director of the Mexican section of Amnesty International, who assures “that there are more risks for the population when the soldiers are in the street”. This is concerned about cases of torture and cruel treatment by the military. Twenty-five complaints of murders, involving soldiers, were registered, between 2019 and 2021, by the Ministry of Defense.
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