López Obrador announces a decree so that the National Guard depends on the Army

Agents of the National Guard, in the town of Cerocahui, in northern Mexico, on June 20. Luis Torres (EFE)

The National Guard will depend entirely on the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena).

This was announced by the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, at his press conference this Monday.

The president has announced that he will issue a decree so that the Army assumes operational and administrative control of the security body, created at the beginning of his presidency as a civilian corporation, by decision of Congress.

This is the latest wink from López Obrador towards the Armed Forces, a new clash with the opposition in the Legislative branch and a turn that reinforces the militarization of public security tasks in the country.

“I am going to issue an agreement so that the National Guard completely depends on the Ministry of Defense,” López Obrador declared.

The president has said that he will send a reform initiative to Congress to remove the civil control, but that he will issue the decree so that the change in the corporation is applied as soon as possible.

"I want Sedena to take charge," he said.

The decree consolidates the original intention of the Government for the National Guard to have a permanent military command.

It is the largest police corporation in Mexico, with more than 114,000 troops, according to official data published earlier this year.

The announcement removes control from the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection and represents the largest military commitment in terms of security of the six-year term.

The National Guard was created in 2019 and a transitory article allows the president to use the Armed Forces in an "extraordinary" way to carry out public security tasks for a period of five years.

The original agreement dictated that the corporation have a civil control, one of the conditions of the opposition to give the green light to the formation of the corporation.

Questioned for going against what had been approved in Congress, the president has justified that his action is within the margins of the law and that it is a necessary change to deliver "good accounts" against the crisis of violence and insecurity that has plagued the country for almost two decades and to prevent it from “going to waste”, alluding to the defunct Federal Police.

"I have an opposition bloc that does not help at all," the president has claimed.

The ruling bloc has a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, but has to negotiate with opposition parties to reach the threshold of two-thirds of the vote to pass constitutional reforms.

That has frustrated some of the priority amendments for the Government.

Its use is not usually common for matters of this magnitude, but López Obrador had already used presidential decrees to, for example, remove control of customs from the treasury and hand it over to the Armed Forces, one of the actors most benefited by its Management.

The Army has become a mixed bag for the Executive and has assumed almost all the flagship projects of the López Obrador government, from the construction of the Felipe Ángeles Airport and sections of the Mayan Train to the distribution of vaccines against covid.

The militarization of security tasks has been especially criticized due to the history of claims of human rights violations and the lack of transparency and accountability of the Armed Forces.

In the last three decades, the Army had not accumulated as much prominence in the country's public life as it does now.

Before assuming power, the president declared himself in favor of removing the military from the streets and returning them to the barracks, but little by little he has turned towards a policy in which his governability depends largely on the Armed Forces.

The counterargument of the federal Executive and several state governments is that there is no way to combat insecurity with civilian police alone, whether due to operational, logistical or corruption deficiencies.

The presence of the military is requested by the bulk of the population in the regions most affected by the violence, which has seen how local authorities are often overwhelmed by the firepower and lead of criminal groups.

López Obrador has also announced that he will restructure the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection.

The president has said that he is evaluating whether he will resort to another decree, to change the regulations of the law or to promote a reform of the Public Administration Law.

“You cannot act with bureaucratic

and even less when it comes to justice,” argued the president, who has raised the matter to the highest point on his list of priorities for the coming weeks.

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