Translated by Emma Brooks
In his book Ejercicio de las Facultades Presidenciales [Exercising Presidential Power], Miguel de la Madrid remembers and reflects on the grave risks associated with turning soldiers into police officers and, moreover, implementing military troops to fight organized crime. Pressures to involve the Armed Forces in police operations have existed in Mexico since the 1980s.
Recalls De la Madrid, who was President of the Republic between 1982 and 1988:
“It was my judgment call and my decision to use the Armed Forces as a last resort to ensure internal law enforcement.”At that time the large cartels that now dominate the national scene, like those of Sinaloa, Jalisco, the Gulf, and the various groups fighting for Michoacán and Guerrero, were in their incipient stages.
“I deliberately removed the army from issues that could be resolved by civil authority through other mechanisms - above all, civil order forces and the police, both federal and local. I reflected that in the past it had been necessary to resort to the Armed Forces to impose law enforcement, more specifically during the tragic events of 1968 [massacre of students in Tlatelolco plaza in Mexico City], and to extinguish student conflicts, or those of laborers or farmers," writes the ex-President.De la Madrid emphasizes that
“the Armed Forces themselves do not want the army or the navy to be deployed for police work, as they are conscious of institutional burnout and discredit that they have suffered as a result of having been used as police. We agree with their position.”The ex-President states in his book, edited in 1998, that the use of the army to combat drug trafficking - a “question that was, and is, debatable” – was limited to the destruction of marijuana fields, the confiscation of drug cargo within the country or on its way to the United States, and supporting police forces in the control of drug trafficking groups in the Republic.
As we know, this paradigm shifted with arrival of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa to the presidency of the Republic, and with the deployment of the Armed Forces in police operations to combat drug trafficking in the Michoacán Operation of January 2007. The fears of Miguel de la Madrid and many other politicians and generals, who knew all too well the nature of the Armed Forces, and the risks associated with converting these trained-to-kill soldiers into persecutors of “crime”, have been more than confirmed.
The recent and tragic episodes in Tlatlaya, Iguala, Apatzingán and Tanhuato, where it is presumed there was participation of military troops, or of soldiers functioning as federal police or shock groups, have placed the armed forces under severe scrutiny.
But they are not responsible for this situation. Some military leaders are responsible for the offenses that have been committed, and could be accused of neglect, complicity, carelessness, or cruelty against civilians (as is thought to have been the case with the 43 missing student teachers from Ayotzinapa, and the 6 dead youth, on the tragic night of September 26 and 27, 2014 in Iguala), but ultimately the responsibility lies in the hands of the political leadership.
Miguel de la Madrid, and other presidents of the Republic with solid training in theory of the State, were quite clear on one matter: whoever holds the title of President of Mexico plays a double role as the head of the government and the head of the state, and thus is also “the supreme power over the country’s Armed Forces.”
But there’s more. Among the metaconstitutional powers of the President of the Republic there is also being the head of the government party; this was stressed by Jorge Carpizo in his classic text about presidential rule in Mexico. Therefore, it is an enormous risk to use the Armed Forces, not only in police operations (of the government) or in national security (of the State), but also in combating dissent or the political opposition (of the party). It is when these borders are not clearly demarcated that crimes of the state occur, like those of 1968, and many others that arose during Mexico’s “dirty war" of the ’70s.
This is the situation that has clearly been presented in Tlatlaya and in Ayotzinapa. We could argue endlessly over whether or not the young student teachers were incinerated in a dump in Cocula; we could even redo the investigation with a new team from the Attorney General’s Office [PGR]. What we cannot avoid, however, is the root problem: now is the time to reverse the decision to continue using military elements in the fight against drug trafficking made by Calderón, and reinforced by Peña Nieto. We are facing a situation that grows more dangerous every day, in which drug power may have infiltrated the Mexican Armed Forces.
This is what we are made to reflect on in the days of mourning for the one year anniversary of the Iguala tragedy. September 15 [Independence Day] reminds us the importance of the State having a legitimate monopoly over violence in order to defend the sovereignty of our nation, not to attack the most humble, most vulnerable, and most criminalized of its inhabitants. Spanish original
*Jenaro Villamil Rodríguez is a Mexican journalist and writer specializing in politics and mass media. He completed undergraduate studies in political science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He began as a reporter for El Financiero (1989-1994) and was editor of El Financiero Sureste (1994-1996) and Coordinator of Special Affairs for La Jornada. Currently, he is a reporter for Proceso. He is also a contributor to the news portal sinembargo.mx and the magazine Zocalo. Since 2011 he has maintained a blog specializing in communications and telecommunications: homozapping.com.mx. Twitter: @jenarovillamil