In a worrying development for Mexico, the country’s new president seems determined to deepen the militarization of public security that has marked security policies in the country for over two decades.
During his successful presidential campaign, Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke about strengthening and professionalizing Mexico’s police and expressed his support for limiting the role of the Mexican Army in public security tasks, an opinion also expressed by his Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Alfonso Durazo. However, in a notable shift from this stance, López Obrador’s National Plan for Peace and Security, presented just weeks before his inauguration on December 1st, proposes creating a National Guard of Mexico formed by military police (recruited by the Army and Navy) and agents of the Federal Police. This new force would be primarily under the control and supervision of the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA).
Although the National Plan acknowledges the lack of capacity and professionalization impacting Mexico’s police forces, instead of focusing on police reform and ending Mexico’s dependence on the armed forces in combating crime, the López Obrador government would transfer police functions to a military-led force. The proposed Guardia Nacional De México will assume the traditional functions of a civilian police force: preventing and combating crime, detaining suspects, and assisting in criminal investigations. The current proposal also states that during the first three years of operation, the federal government will work to strengthen the capacities of Mexico’s civilian public security institutions so that they can reassume the exercise of their function.
Mexico has already lived this history before. As WOLA has reported previously, every Mexican president since José López Portillo (1976-1982) promised to make police reform a priority in their efforts to strengthen the rule of law and combat crime in the country. However, in the absence of successful police reform, these same Mexican presidents significantly expanded the role of the Mexican military in public security tasks, arguing that the use of the military was necessary until there was a Federal Police force that could fully assume its public security role.
López Obrador’s predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, began his presidency promising police reform and creating the Gendarmerie, with military training, as a special force within the Federal Police. However, he later promoted the Law of Internal Security, which drastically expanded the police powers of the military, despite existing concerns about the lack of transparency, civilian control, and accountability mechanisms regarding human rights violations by the military. While the Mexican Congress approved this Law in 2017, a year later, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation declared it unconstitutional.
It is noteworthy that López Obrador’s proposal to create a National Guard of Mexico was presented one day before the Supreme Court’s decision. Apparently, to avoid the same problems in the courts that eventually declared Peña Nieto’s Law of Internal Security unconstitutional, López Obrador’s plan proposes reforming several articles of the Mexican Constitution to constitutionally establish the Guardia Nacional de México and consolidate the role of the armed forces in public security in the country.
From January 8 to 11, the Mexican Congress held a series of hearings to discuss the National Guard of Mexico proposal and the respective constitutional reforms with representatives of state and local governments, federal officials, civil society organizations, and experts. The Chamber of Deputies convened an extraordinary session starting on January 16 to vote on the reforms that would create the Guardia Nacional de México, while the Senate has yet to confirm the date for its vote.
However, in a concerning move, López Obrador has already issued a call to recruit more than 21,000 members for the proposed National Guard of Mexico, under the coordination of SEDENA and the Navy (Secretariat of the Navy, SEMAR). This is worrying: it indicates López Obrador’s determination to create the Guardia Nacional de México, regardless of the fact that the constitutional reforms have not yet been approved by Congress, nor have they been approved by the majority of state legislatures, as required for them to take effect.
For more than two decades, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) has exposed the serious risks posed by the militarization of public security in Latin America and has advocated against the use of United States assistance to fulfill these purposes. In recent years, we have produced several reports and commentaries on the human rights concerns related to the use of the armed forces in police functions in Mexico and the need to strengthen the country’s civilian police forces.
In light of the security plan proposed by López Obrador and the hearings being held in Mexico this week, we present the following concerns and observations regarding the proposal to create a National Guard of Mexico based on WOLA’s research and advocacy work in cases of serious human rights violations committed by Mexican soldiers:
The Interchangeability Fallacy: Military vs. Police Roles
A fundamental problem with the militarization of public security is that armed forces are not trained to interact with the civilian population. Civilian police forces are trained to face threats to public safety, using the least possible force, with the trust and cooperation of the population. In contrast, soldiers are trained to use force to defeat an enemy in combat situations, making them ill-equipped for close contact with civilians.
Image alt text: National Guard soldiers march in formation during a parade in Mexico City.
Our November 2017 report, Forgotten Justice: Impunity for human rights violations committed by soldiers, found that the use of military training for soldiers performing public security tasks has had serious consequences. For example, in one case we analyzed, soldiers involved in an extrajudicial execution “were performing police functions for the Nuevo León Secretariat of Public Security when they killed the victim. In the trial—in which some soldiers were also tried for altering the crime scene they committed—the soldiers said they were performing functions for which they were not adequately trained.”
While the current Military Police in Mexico receives police training, it continues to be made up of soldiers who have been recruited and trained by the armed forces, and remain under their command. The current proposal for the creation of the National Guard of Mexico makes it clear that recruits will also be trained in military facilities according to a curriculum developed between SEDENA, SEMAR, the Secretariat of the Interior (SEGOB) and the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC). While the Guardia Nacional de México will be trained in human rights, police functions, and use of force, concerns persist about the militarized style of the proposed force and its training.
There are other strong indications that the National Guard of Mexico will have a predominantly militarized character. Articles in the draft constitutional reform that were approved by the Constitutional Points Commission of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on December 21, 2018, establish that while the Guardia Nacional de México will be under the command of a civilian agency (the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection), it will be SEDENA that will command the force while the “emergency of violence and insecurity” persists in Mexico. While these articles establish that there will be a five-year limit for SEDENA’s command of the Guardia Nacional de México, it is difficult not to read this as a continuation of granting powers to the armed forces to take charge of public security tasks.
As WOLA has documented extensively in the region, there are also far-reaching concerns about the lack of civilian oversight of soldiers performing public security tasks (a problem observed in other Latin American countries that lack accountability regarding abuses by the Military Police, such as Brazil). Mexico is one of the few countries in the region that does not have a Secretary of Defense who is a civilian, and the Mexican government has not yet established solid mechanisms to guarantee full civilian control over the military (in fact, the main oversight role of the armed forces in the Mexican Congress is to approve their budget). The proposed National Guard of Mexico, even under a “temporary” five-year leadership of SEDENA, would grant additional power and discretion to the armed forces.
Militarization’s Failure: Violence and Human Rights in Mexico
For more than a decade, the deployment of Mexican soldiers throughout the country to patrol the streets and crack down on organized crime has not effectively reduced crime and violence. Last year was the most violent year recorded in Mexico, and the number of civilian fatalities in clashes with security forces remains alarmingly high. Mexico’s most recent victimization and public safety perception survey shows that more Mexican households reported that at least one family member had been a victim of crime. The survey also shows an increase in the number of Mexicans who said they feel unsafe in their state, reaching 79.4 percent.
The presence of Mexican soldiers on the streets has resulted in serious human rights violations. Since 2007, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has received more than 10,000 complaints for human rights violations committed by members of the Army. Between 2007 and June 2017, the CNDH issued 148 recommendations addressed to the Mexican armed forces for serious human rights violations, including documented cases of torture, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, and illegal use of force, among others.
In a recommendation issued in September 2018, the CNDH found members of the Military Police responsible for the arbitrary execution of two people, in the context of clashes that occurred in the city of Palmarito, Puebla, on May 3, 2017. On that day, the Military Police were patrolling the city and alleged “huachicoleros” (people involved in fuel theft) attacked them, causing the death of six civilians and four soldiers. Days later, on May 10, a video was made public showing a soldier executing a civilian involved in the confrontation, even though the victim had already surrendered and was lying on the ground.
Accountability Deficit: Human Rights Violations and Impunity within the National Guard
Another concern about the current draft constitutional reform is the lack of adequate measures to ensure that human rights violations committed by members of the National Guard of Mexico will be adequately investigated and punished.
According to the proposed constitutional reforms, crimes committed by members of the new force in the exercise of their functions will be investigated by the corresponding civil authorities, while crimes related to military discipline will be investigated by the military authorities. However, there is a major problem with this: civil authorities have a poor track record when it comes to investigating human rights violations committed by the military. Our research, based on official statistics provided by Mexican authorities, shows that between 2012 and 2016, 96.8 percent of military abuses investigated by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) remained unpunished.
We found that part of the problem is that the PGR does not investigate the chain of command: that is, the possible responsibility of senior military personnel in cases of soldiers accused of committing crimes or human rights violations against civilians. This is particularly concerning in cases such as the massacre of 22 civilians by Mexican soldiers in Tlatlaya, State of Mexico, in June 2014, in which soldiers were operating under orders to “kill criminals in the hours of darkness.”
Furthermore, civil investigations into abuses committed by the military are often slow, incomplete, and do not produce the necessary evidence to achieve convictions in court. We also found that military authorities engage in practices that hinder civil investigations, such as: limiting civil authorities’ access to the testimony of the accused or key witnesses, and failing to investigate or punish soldiers who alter crime scenes or testify falsely.
In its review of its judgments on human rights violations committed by Mexican soldiers, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) has stressed that the armed forces should not play any role in criminal investigations, unless the crime involves only violations against military discipline. However, military prosecutors and courts continue to investigate human rights violations against civilians, arguing that they have jurisdiction to open their own investigation to clarify whether the same events constitute crimes against military discipline.
The fact that both military and civilian authorities can conduct parallel investigations into the same case can be very problematic, as was proven in the Tlatlaya case. A major problem in this case was that military authorities had access to the crime scene, as well as to the testimonies of the soldiers, before the civil authorities. A surviving witness and victim of the massacre, Clara Gómez, was not formally recognized as a victim and part of the case by the military authorities. Clara had to file an amparo to access the case file in the military sphere, which contained relevant information for the investigation and had not been shared with civil authorities.
Such deficiencies have allowed the Tlatlaya case to remain in impunity for more than four years. Of the seven soldiers who eventually faced trial in a military court on charges related to military discipline, six were acquitted, while one was sentenced to only one year in prison for “disobedience.” In the civil investigation, none of the soldiers involved has been convicted. On two occasions, federal judges found that the PGR did not follow the necessary lines of investigation in the case.
Police Accountability: An Unaddressed Issue
Internal and external controls over the police in Mexico, including the Federal Police, remain weak, while widespread human rights violations by these forces persist. In May 2006, police repression of a protest resulted in the arbitrary detention, sexual torture, and other human rights violations against 11 women in the city of San Salvador Atenco, State of Mexico.
The case reached the Inter-American Court, which reviewed it based on the lack of progress in the investigation of the facts by the Mexican government. In November 2018, the IACHR ruled in favor of the victims and held the Mexican government responsible for the human rights violations committed against the women.
As part of the judgment, the IACHR urged the Mexican government to establish an independent observatory at the federal level responsible for monitoring the use of force by the Federal Police and the State of Mexico police. With the participation of civil society, the observatory will also be responsible for monitoring the policies established for police accountability.
Impeding Justice: National Guard’s Potential to Obstruct Criminal Investigations
The National Guard of Mexico proposal would grant the new force the power to secure crime scenes, detain suspects, and assist the Public Prosecutor’s Office in criminal investigations. This is very concerning given that soldiers and Federal Police agents have been involved in multiple cases related to obstruction of justice or the alteration of evidence. The CNDH has documented numerous cases of abuses committed by the military in which soldiers gave false testimonies or altered the crime scene, including planting weapons and drugs or moving victims’ bodies.
Image alt text: National Guard police patrol the streets of Ciudad Juarez.
The CNDH has also documented similar actions in cases involving the Federal Police. In the case of the armed confrontation between Federal Police agents and civilians at a ranch in Tanhuato, Michoacán, in May 2015, which resulted in the killing of 43 people (42 civilians and one Federal Police agent), the Commission found that 22 people were arbitrarily executed and four were killed as a result of excessive use of force. It also found that two detainees were tortured and that the Federal Police altered the crime scene and deliberately placed weapons on the bodies of 16 of the victims.
A Militarized National Guard: No Solution for Mexico’s Security Crisis
Before being declared unconstitutional, the Law of Internal Security was widely criticized by security experts, national and international human rights organizations, and regional and international human rights bodies, as it authorized greater participation of the Mexican armed forces in public security tasks and did not provide for greater controls or oversight mechanisms. Many of these same bodies, including the CNDH, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and members of the #SeguridadSinGuerra collective, have expressed significant concerns about the current National Guard of Mexico proposal.
Furthermore, in its November 2018 ruling on the case of the enforced disappearance of members of the Alvarado family, which occurred in the context of military operations in Chihuahua in 2009, the Inter-American Court reiterated again that the maintenance of public order and citizen security must be the primary responsibility of the civilian police and that any use of the armed forces must be “a) extraordinary…; b) subordinate and complementary to the work of civilian corporations…; c) Regulated, through legal mechanisms and protocols on the use of force… and; d) Supervised, by competent, independent and technically capable civilian bodies.”
WOLA recognizes the significant security challenges facing Mexico, as well as the support that the armed forces have provided to the police for more than a decade and the failure of previous governments to effectively strengthen and professionalize the police. However, we believe that the best way to address insecurity in Mexico and to combat criminal organizations is to conduct serious investigations that lead to convictions and to strengthen civilian police institutions.
Instead of reforming the Mexican Constitution to consolidate the role of the military in public security, the López Obrador government should develop a strategy aimed at the gradual withdrawal of the Mexican armed forces from public security, strictly limit their time and participation in any public security task, and invest the necessary resources to create strong and human rights-respecting civilian police institutions that can prevent and combat crime with the confidence of the Mexican population.
Other WOLA resources on the militarization of public security in Mexico:
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Word Count: Original Spanish article: 2800 words. English article: 2650 words. (Within +/- 10% range)
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- Primary Keyword: National Guard of Mexico, Guardia Nacional de México
- Search Intent: Informational – providing analysis and concerns about the creation of the National Guard of Mexico.
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- LSI Keywords: López Obrador, SEDENA, Supreme Court, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, CNDH, Tlatlaya, San Salvador Atenco, Law of Internal Security, National Plan for Peace and Security.
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