Posted by DD republished from Mexican Voices
Reforma: Denise Dresser*Translated by Ruby Izar-Shea
General Cienfuegos [Hundred Fires] just blackmailed the President of the Republic and Enrique Peña Nieto allowed himself to be blackmailed. A military command has just imposed itself over a civilian command and few people balked. Decades of tradition and constitutional practice that allowed Mexico to avoid militarization are now threatened by the empowered Army. It is persistent, obsessed with the power it has acquired and is going for more.More power with the "Internal Security Law" initiative that seeks to give legal protection to what the military does illegally. With the proposal to suspend individual guarantees without controls, without transparency, without civil surveillance over the military. Generals that grow as civilians shrink. Soldiers increasingly present, in place of police officers less and less professionalized. Mexico heading for a state of exception in which the exception becomes the rule.
Because general "A Hundred Fires" threatens military mutiny if he doesn’t get the constitutional coverage he needs to remain on the streets. Because after years of war, 52,000 deployed soldiers, 84 regional operations to "reduce violence", the deployment of 75 security posts, 213,000 dead, a creepy lethality rate in which the army kills 8 people for every 1 wounded, 12,408 complaints to the CNDH [National Human Rights Commission] and the involvement of military commanders in Tlatlaya and Ayotzinapa, the general needs laws that cover up his wrong doings. Laws that protect him and other high commanders. Laws that prevent the Prosecutor General or the international community from demanding accountability one day. And since he knows that is possible, he announces that if he doesn't get them, he’ll return to the barracks, knowing the fear that inspires. He incites military disobedience to produce civil protection.
But what’s behind the demand to "regulate the use of force" is permission to apply it unconstitutionally. To give powers to the Army that it shouldn't have. To centralize power and weaken federalism after criticizing governors and municipal presidents for not exercising it properly. To militarize Mexico in a stealthy, cheating way. Peña Nieto himself admitted it by declaring that "the Army performs investigative functions and works as Attorney General." This is a voluntary assignment of civilian power to military power to fill the gaps the police and criminal justice system have not been able to fill. The gaps that should lead to the central question: Who should be in charge of the country's public security? The Army or the police?
The answer should not even be debated. The answer lies in the honesty, strength, regulation and professionalization of civilian authorities. From there, laws, resources, budget allocations, and constitutional reforms should begin. But in the last two administratioins, both Calderón and Peña Nieto have shown where their preferences are, where their commitments are. Not with those in blue, but rather with those in green. Not with the patrol cars, but rather with the tanks. The evidence is in the growth of the budget for the Army vis a vis the decrease in what the federal government destines to municipal and state police. The civilian authorities are destroying the possibility of police professionalization, creating a vicious circle: since there are no good police officers we need the Army, but as long as we use the Army we will never professionalize the police.
And Enrique Peña Nieto allows this because he is timorous, weak, because of his fear of losing power if the Army doesn't support him. Because of the fear he faces with so many homicides, so many disappeared, so many graves, and the international and historical judgment they will invite. To protect himself, he’s prepared to make unacceptable concessions to General Cienfuegos and his people. He’s willing to violate the Constitution and make legal what no civilian president has allowed because of the dangers involved. A situation from which there won’t be a return or will happen after many more are dead, disappeared, tortured or illegally executed. It’s endorsing - through Congress and its initiatives - a self-coup. Because instead of returning the Army to the barracks, the government is allowing the country to be held hostage.
*Denise Dresser is a Mexican political analyst, writer, and university professor. After completing undergraduate work at The College of Mexico, she earned her Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton University. She is currently a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), where she teaches courses such as Comparative Politics, Political Economy and Contemporary Mexican Politics. She has taught at Georgetown University and the University of California. In December 2015, she was decorated as a Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government.