Politics: The militarization of AMLO’s government
The bizarre chain of events beginning with the arrest of Mexico’s previous minister of defense last October at Los Angeles International Airport, his subsequent release after US officials dropped charges to allow Mexico to prosecute the case, and his recent exoneration by Mexico’s Federal Attorney General's Office, has left much room for speculation.
But there can be little doubt that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s vigorous defense of Cienfuegos as a victim of US overreach – unlike his enthusiastic approval of the US decision to arrest former Minister of Public Security Genaro García Luna under strikingly similar conditions – reflects the extent to which he has become increasingly indebted to the military. This is the same military he promised throughout his election campaign to send back to the barracks and relieve of public security tasks.
Changing course almost immediately, he replaced the Federal Police with a fully militarized National Guard, and by last May had activated a transitory constitutional article empowering him to "permanently deploy the Armed Forces in public security tasks" for five years. Just how effectively they are replacing the country’s greatly diminished state police forces remains to be seen, as much of the military’s new tasks extend well beyond public security. AMLO has put the Army in charge of the building and managing of railroads as well as a new Mexico City airport terminal at Santa Lucia; the construction of a nationwide network of 13,000 branch locations of the government’s new Social Welfare Bank (2,600 in the first stage); the management of customs and ports under Navy administration, and the logistics of the nationwide coronavirus immunization campaign.
This militarization of the government seems to reflect both fear of the military's aligning with powerful economic and political forces threatened by his policies and the hope that a satisfied high command can help him bypass a government bureaucracy he has long distrusted. However, discipline and obedience do not necessarily mean efficiency or effectiveness, as evidenced by historical levels of violence and public insecurity following more than 12 years of military control over public safety, much less in managing other areas of public administration, an arrangement that poses risks to crucial aspects of the rule of law, transparency and human rights.
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