Politics: The National Guard’s enigmatic rollout
It comes as no surprise that security remains the most pressing problem on citizens’ minds today as 2019 is well on its way toward surpassing 2018 as the year with the highest homicide rate at least since 1989. The problem is highlighted by a resurgence of large-scale gangland massacres, especially in the greater Bajío region.
Such groups have seen an opening in the fact that new government decided to forego any effort to strengthen the Federal Police or rebuild municipal and state police forces, and instead opted to try and reshuffle existing security forces into a National Guard. The project was announced even before the current administration took office, but a seriously understaffed force officially began operations at the end of June. Meanwhile, only a few states have functioning local police forces with a minimal capacity to engage with such highly armed and organized criminal groups.
The Guard is running into all the problems of disorder, confusion and administrative disorganization that were easily foreseen, while many members of the Federal Police are protesting being drafted into the new institution. Most worrisome is the government's apparent lack of any coherent approach for tackling such national security challenges, and its struggle to answer even the most basic questions, such as the projected size of the force, what criteria is being used to decide where to deploy it, and what strategies it will pursue. Moreover, it seems the members of the Guard have been deployed helter-skelter around the country, with no apparent regard for any discernible criteria.
The resurgence of violence in Michoacan serves to remind us of the costly mistakes the government of former President Peña Nieto committed early in its administration that gave rise to some of the main groups engaged in the bloody turf wars today; lessons the current administration seems determined to ignore.
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