The Senate approved, on September 9, in second reading, the passage of the National Guard under the army control. Human rights organizations denounce a decrease in the rule of law.
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“The proposal does not aim to militarize the country. (…) We do not want an authoritarian state”, has repeated for days the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (“Amlo”), during his conferences daily press. However, the Senate approved, Friday, September 9, a series of laws which give the army control of the National Guard on Friday, September 9, previously under civil mandate. The reform of this public security body, created in 2019 by AMLO (2018-2024), causes the shields of human rights defenders who denounce a “militarization of Mexico”.
This final vote, in second reading, arouses a strong challenge when Amlo had promised, during his 2018 presidential campaign, to “send the soldiers back to their barracks”. The following year, the president of the center left launched his new national guard, under the civil aegile of the Ministry of Public Security, aiming, in the long term, to replace the army, deployed by its predecessors to fight the strike force of the drug cartels. But this security body remains, three years later, composed mainly of soldiers, now passing under the administrative and operational control of the army. 2> more than 2,300 dead in August 2>
A flip-flop justified by AMLO with regard to the security crisis which continues to worsen. The permanent war with which cartels are engaged in the control of drug roads to the United States left 2,304 dead in August. The hecatombe makes it vertigo: half of the mandate of six years of AMLO, 109,000 assassinations were recorded, almost double the murders (63,800) recorded during the first three years of the mandate of its predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
After the deputies’ vote, 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 electrical atmosphere, opposition senators denounced the risks of explosion of violence linked to an increased presence of the army. Amlo deployed 150,000 soldiers on the territory, near the triple of military staff allocated to security during the presidency of Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), criticized for involving the army in the fight against drug trafficking. A strategy pursued by his successors, Mr. Peña Nieto and, now, Amlo himself.
The days preceding the vote, hundreds of Mexicans protested in front of the Senate in Mexico City against a “military national guard”. A dispute supported by Edith Olivares Ferreto, director in Mexico of Amnesty International, who ensures “that there is more risks for the population when the soldiers are on the street”. This is concerned about cases of torture and cruel treatments on the part of the military. Twenty-five murders complaints, involving soldiers, were recorded, between 2019 and 2021, by the Ministry of Defense.
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