The report recounts hard data that demonstrates the “failed strategy” implemented intensively from 2007 to 2024, a period in which “at least 101,933 people have disappeared and 452,254 have been murdered, including 49,100 women and 140 journalists.
MEXICO CITY. After 20 years of relying on the Armed Forces to take charge of public security in Mexico, the persistence of violence in the country shows that “this strategy has failed, since it has not only not helped reduce crime and violence affecting the country, but has created an environment conducive to members of the Armed Forces violating human rights when carrying out their public security activities.”
This is the opinion of Amnesty International in its most recent report “Changing the Paradigm. From the Militarization of Public Security to Citizen Security with a Human Rights Approach.”
The report recounts hard data that demonstrates the “failed strategy” implemented intensively from 2007 to 2024, a period in which “at least 101,933 people have disappeared and 452,254 have been murdered, including 49,100 women, 140 journalists and 221 defenders of territory, land and the environment.”
The document states that the militarization strategy sustained in recent administrations has not only incorporated military elements but has imposed a doctrine among police corporations of “obedience and heroism,” favoring the hiring of personnel with military backgrounds or belonging to the Armed Forces.
“The decision of successive governments to employ the Armed Forces in public security tasks implies addressing security problems with a logic similar to an armed conflict. This means that, based on the construction of an enemy, the use of lethal force is privileged over other means, instead of seeking lasting solutions in which human rights are respected and guaranteed at all times,” the report states.
“Using all the force of the State in a spirit of combating an enemy to try to reduce crime and violence, without addressing social and cultural factors that encourage such acts, is a measure that has – at most – limited positive impacts in the short term, but can contribute from the beginning to the commission of human rights violations,” Amnesty International assesses.
In addition to this, it warns that the militarization of public security has implied “an increase in stigmas related to police corruption, inefficiency based on the false idea that all police forces must have the capacity to ‘combat’ criminal groups.”
In fact, this narrative has served to justify the disappearance of the Federal Police, to move towards a National Guard, which although on paper was born in 2019 as a civil corporation, in fact became a military entity, which is now part of the Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) as a result of the recently approved constitutional reform, a legacy of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
After a historical and legislative review of the increase in the presence of the Armed Forces in public security since the Felipe Calderon administration, the organization makes a count of the deployment of the military forces by administration: from 2006 to 2012, 48,500; between 2012 and 2018, 53,000 and from 2018 to 2022, according to the most up-to-date data, 73,347 military elements were deployed.
In the case of the militarized National Guard, the report highlights that as of November 2023 this organization had 128 thousand members, 295 barracks had been built, there were 124 more under construction and 155 to be built, in addition to the fact that the SEDENA had already allocated 100 spaces to the National Guard.
Amnesty International warns that the strategy of militarization of public security “violates Mexico’s international obligations in terms of human rights,” including the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of the forced disappearance of three members of the Alvarado family in Chihuahua, which instructs the country that if it resorts to the military forces in matters of citizen security, it should be done “in an extraordinary and subordinate manner, regulated and supervised by a civil authority.”
The document reports complaints to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), from 2019 to August 2024, against the National Guard, 1,893, and against the SEDENA, 2,279, motivated by acts of deprivation of life; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; acts of torture, and arbitrary detentions.
The organization takes up part of the files revealed by Guacamaya, in which it is noted that activists from civil society organizations, including Amnesty International, were monitored by the SEDENA, while in 2023 it was revealed that the SEDENA used the Pegasus software to spy on members of the Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh) and the president of the Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee, Raymundo Ramos Vázquez, who “were investigating serious human rights violations committed by the Army.”
Amnesty International has conducted an exhaustive review of international human rights standards and IACHR rulings against Mexico, which are in conflict with the Mexican government’s militarized strategy and which, in its view, should be taken into account in the paradigm shift in public security.
The report recognizes the efforts of civil society organizations to publicly present proposals to overcome militarization, including the collective “Security Without War,” which brings together 300 organizations, and “Feminist Antimilitarist Resistance,” which brings together 106 feminist collectives.
The report is based on the exchange of experiences of 28 social organizations in the country, with the aim of “gathering perspectives and proposals from organizations from a local perspective and close to the realities of the communities that live day to day with the militarized strategies of the Mexican State.”
Among the organizations that has most documented the effects of militarization is the Human Rights Committee of Nuevo Laredo, a border city that has become a true war zone, where civilian victims suffer the effects of this strategy.
The Amnesty International document highlights that in 2023, three massacres occurred in Nuevo Laredo, caused by members of the Armed Forces, and which to this day remain unpunished.
Among the massacres described is the one that occurred in the early hours of February 26th of that year, in which seven men traveling in a van “were pursued and attacked by four military vehicles at approximately 4:00 a.m.,” leaving a total of five men dead, one seriously injured, and another unharmed.
“The soldiers obstructed urgent medical care and presented an implausible account of events in which they claimed that it had been an armed confrontation, despite the fact that there is no evidence that a confrontation occurred or that the victims were armed,” it says.
Another example is what happened on April 16th of last year on the Nuevo Laredo-Piedras Negras federal highway, where “National Guard agents attacked a van in which members of a family were traveling,” incidents in which two people died, including a 15-year-old teenager, and three more people were injured.
“There was no clear motive for the incident and, according to the survivors’ testimony, when they realized that they were not the people they supposed to be, the National Guard members left them there without providing medical assistance,” Amnesty notes in its report.
Also, on May 18th, 2023, “five people died at the hands of members of the Mexican Army,” events that, according to SEDENA, arose from the “response to an attack and that the people had died due to the exchange of gunfire.”
However, “a video from security cameras shows that the people on board the truck had already been subdued and were lined up next to a wall when the soldiers shot them.”
The cases that occurred in Nuevo Laredo “show that the security forces were not operating in the area with a spirit of enforcing the law, but with an attitude of combating an enemy and disregarding their obligation to respect and protect life,” the organization considers in its report.
After an analysis of militarization in Mexico and using one of the crudest examples of the consequences of this strategy, the human rights situation in Nuevo Laredo, the organization encourages the Mexican government to take measures to demilitarize citizen security.
To do so, Amnesty International takes into account four basic principles to change the military paradigm to a civilian one.
Thus, Amnesty considers it essential to “design security strategies focused on the protection of human rights”; to conduct a police reform that commits to “law enforcement functions and security tasks being carried out by a federal agency with a command, structure and affiliation of a civilian nature with a focus on respect and protection of respect for life, personal integrity and personal security.”
Among the fundamental principles that Amnesty International recommends for the paradigm shift, it highlights the “immediate” modification of the functioning of the National Guard “to ensure full respect for human rights in all its operations,” as well as “directing a military reform to delimit the functions of the Armed Forces under a regulatory framework that respects and guarantees human rights.”
The organization makes a series of recommendations to the executive and legislative branches, in order to make the necessary adjustments and comply with the international commitments acquired by Mexico in terms of human rights, incompatible with the militarization of citizen security, and which imply “a specific plan for the withdrawal of the Armed Forces from public security.”
Original article by Gloria Leticia Díaz, Proceso, November 20th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.