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ABSTRACT
Sixteen years into the war on drugs, it is clear that Mexico’s armed forces are unable to solve their nation’s security crisis alone. There is need for an alternative security force capable of supplementing the military and facilitating its return to the barracks. Despite several attempts to create such forces, the military’s presence remains expansive. To understand why, I employ a multiagent model to analyze the relationships between the military, alternative security forces, and presidential administrations. I find the military benefited from cabinet-level representation, which gave its leaders unfiltered access to the president.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Daniel Rea and Pablo Ferri, La Tropa: Por qué mata un soldado (Mexico City, Mexico: Aguilar, 2019); Nathaniel Parish Flannery, “Calderón’s War,” Journal of International Affairs (2013): 181–96; and David Pion-Berlin, “A Tale of Two Missions: Mexican Military Police Patrols Versus High-Value Targeted Operations,” Armed Forces & Society 43, no. 1 (2017): 53–71.
2. See Pion-Berlin’s, “Defense Organizations in Latin America” for a Comparative Analysis of the Civilianization of Defense Ministries in Latin America.” and David Pion-Berlin, “Defense Organization and Civil-Military Relations in Latin America,” Armed Forces and Society 35, no. 3 (2009): 562–86.
3. Thomas Sowers, “Beyond the Soldier and the State: Contemporary Operations and Variance in Principal-Agent Relationships,” Armed Forces & Society 31, no. 3 (2005): 385–409.
4. Samuel Edward Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (Transaction Publishers, 2002); and Eric Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments (Prentice Hall, 2002).
5. Peter Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil Military Relations (Harvard University Press, 2009); and Dietmar Braun and David H. Guston, “Principal-Agent Theory and Research Policy: An Introduction,” Science and public policy 30, no. 3 (2003), 302–08.
6. Braun and Guston, “Principal-Agent Theory.”
7. Feaver, Armed Agents.
8. Feaver, Armed Agents, 314.
9. Derek Lutterbeck, “Between Police and Military: The New Security Agenda and the Rise of Gendarmeries,” Cooperation and Conflict 39, no. 1 (2004), 45–68.
10. Ibid.
11. Álvaro Vizcaíno, Gendarmería y otras soluciones para la Seguridad Pública y la Seguridad Interior. (Mexico City, Mexico: Editorial Ubijus, 2018).
12. Pion-Berlin and Trinkunas, “Latin America’s Growing Security Gap,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 1 (2011), 39–53.
13. Feaver, Armed Agents, 81–83.
14. Samuel Huntington, “Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of the Armed SERVICES,” American Political Science Review 55, no. 3 (1961): 40–52; and Harold Trinkunas, “The Crisis in Venezuelan Civil-Military Relations: From Punto Fijo to the Fifth Republic,” Latin American Research Review (2002): 41–76.
15. David Pion-Berlin, Igor Acácio, and Andrew Ivey, “Democratically Consolidated, Externally Threatened, and NATO Aligned: Finding Unexpected Deficiencies in Civilian Control,” Democratization 26, no. 6 (2019): 1070–87.
16. Pion-Berlin, “Defense Organizations in Latin America.”
17. Srabana Gupta and Richard E. Romano, “Monitoring the Principal with Multiple Agents,” The Rand Journal of Economics (1998): 427–42.
18. Pion-Berlin, “Defense Organizations in Latin America.”
19. Jesús A López-González, “Civil-Military Relations and the Militarization of Public Security in Mexico, 1989-2010: Challenges to Democracy,” in Mexico’s Struggle for Public Security edited by George Philip and Susana Berruecos, (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
20. Diane Davis, “Undermining the Rule of Law: Democratization and the Dark Side of Police Reform in Mexico,” Latin American Politics and Society 48, no. 1 (2006): 55–86.
21. The term “Pax Priista” comes from Mónica Serrano and Paul Kenny. See: Paul Kenny and Mónica Serrano, “Mexican State and Organized Crime: An Unending Story,” in Mexico’s Security Failure (Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2013).
22. Kenny and Serrano, “The Mexican State and Organized Crime,” 38.
23. Ibid.
24. López-González, “Civil-Military Relations and the Militarization of Public Security in Mexico,” 77.
25. Sabet, “Police Reform in Mexico.”
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.,197.
28. Ibid., 187.
29. Ibid., 2012 187.
30. Daniel Sabet, ”Police Reform in Mexico: Advances and Persistent Obstacles,” in Shared Responsibility, ed. Eric L. Olson, David A. Shirk and Andrew Selee (San Diego, CA: Trans-Border Institute, 2010).
31. Alexander L. George, and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (MIT Press, 2005); and James Mahoney, “Qualitative Methodology and Comparative Politics,” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 2 (2007): 122–44.
32. See Michael Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures: The End of the Cold War and Weakening US Civilian Control,” Armed Forces & Society 24, no. 3 (1998): 389–405 for a discussion on the established wisdom of high internal threats leading to greater military autonomy.
33. Data for Table 3 collected from World Bank’s publicly available data on homicides per capita.
34. Ley and Trejo, Votes, Drugs, and Violence, 2020.
35. Diego Esparza, Policing and Politics in Latin America: When Law Enforcement Breaks the Law (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2022).
36. Sabet, Police Reform, 2010.
37. López González, “Civil Military Relations and the Militarization of Public Security in Mexico.”
38. Craig A. Deare. A Tale of Two Eagles: The US-Mexico Bilateral Defense Relationship Post Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
39. Deare, “A Tale of Two Eagles,” 223.
40. López González, “Civil-Military Relations and the Militarization of Public Security in Mexico,” 87.
41. Davis, “Undermining the rule Of Law.”
42. López-González, “Militarization of Public Security in Mexico,” 90-91.
43. “Chaos Reigns in Calderón’s Day,” LA Times, December 2, 2006.
44. Kenny and Serrano, “Mexican State and Organized Crime.”
45. López González, “Militarization of Public Security in Mexico,” 90–91.
46. Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley, Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
47. Ibid.
48. Hope, “Violencia 2007-2011: La tormenta perfecta,” Nexos (2003).
49. Interview with Calderón advisor 1, conducted October 17, 2019, Mexico City.
50. Sabina Morales Rosas and Carlos A. Pérez Ricart “Militarización: Una propuesta conceptual basada en el caso mexicano (1995-2012),” documentos de trabajo. Berlín: México vía Berlín e. V. No. 2, 2014: 36.
51. Jorge Chabat, “La respuesta del gobierno de Calderón al desafío del narcotráfico: entre lo malo y lo peor,” in Los Grandes Problemas de México: Seguridad Nacional and Seguridad Interior, ed. Arturo Alvarado & Mónica Serrano (Mexico City, Mexico: Colegio Del México, 2010).
52. “Intentional Homicides (per 100,000 People) – Mexico.” World Bank.
53. Gustavo Flores-Macías, “The Consequences of Militarizing Anti-Drug Efforts for State Capacity in Latin America: Evidence from Mexico,” Comparative Politics 51, no. 1 (2018): 1–20.
54. Cano 2008.
55. “Intentional Homicides (per 100,000 People) – Mexico.” World Bank.
56. Mauricio Torres, “La Propuesta De Crear 32 Policías Estatales De Mando Único Genera Debate,” Expansión, 2010.
57. “Calderón quiere una policía lejana a los narcos,” El Universal (2008).
58. Esparza, Policing and Politics in Latin America, 225.
59. Interview with gendarmerie expert 1, November 27, 2019, Mexico City.
60. Benjamin Lessing, Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
61. Interview with Guillermo Valdés, December 11, 2019, Mexico City.
62. Ibid.
63. Benjamin Lessing, “Making peace in Drug Wars,” 227.
64. Alejandro Hope, “Algunos Preguntas sobre la gendamería,” Animal Político (2012).
65. Alejandro Hope, “Is it worth creating a gendarmerie in Mexico?” Insight Crime (2012).
66. Vizcaíno, Gendarmería.
67. Interview with gendarmerie expert 2, November 27, 2019, in Mexico City.
68. Interview with Renato Sales, on December 9, 2019, in Mexico City.
69. Mauricio Torres, “La Propuesta De Crear 32 Policías Estatales De Mando Único Genera Debate,” Expansión, 2010.
70. George Grayson, The Impact of President Felipe Calderón’s War on Drugs in the Armed Forces: The Prospects for Mexico’s “Militarization” and Bilateral Relations (US Army War College, 2013).
71. David Pion-Berlin, “A Tale of Two Missions.”
72. David Pion-Berlin and Miguel Carreras, “Armed Forces, Police and Crime-Fighting in Latin America,” Journal of Politics in Latin America 9, no. 3 (2017): 3–26.
73. Valdés interview.
74. Renato Sales interview.
75. Interview with Manelich Castilla conducted on November 21, 2019, in Mexico City.
76. Interview with gendarmerie expert 1.
77. Vizcaíno, Gendarmería, 212-213.
78. Interview with gendarmerie expert 1.
79. Vizcaíno, Gendarmería.
80. This document was provided by a Gendarmerie commander after our interview. Entitled “Prospectiva 2020-2030 de la Division Gendarmería,” it was a report to the federal government on the strategic vision of commanders and their goals for the force by 2030. Since the federal police, the agency which published the report, no longer exists, finding it online has proven more difficult. For a copy of the report, contact the author of this article. Prospectiva 2020-2030 de la División Gendarmería. Policia Federal. 2018.
81. The Military Balance 2018, Institute for Strategic Studies (2018).
82. Ramírez, León. “De La Crítica Al Aval: Los Cambios En Los Dichos De AMLO Sobre El Ejército En Seguridad Pública,” Animal Político, Jahuay 27, 2021.
83. Alejandro Pocoroba García, “(Re)activación de la guardia nacional en México,” in Fuerzas Armadas, Guardia Nacional y Violencia en México, eds Raúl Benítez Manuat and Elisa Gómez Sánchez (Mexico City: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2021).
84. Ibid.
85. Héctor Gutiérrez Trejo, “Policía Federal vs. AMLO: crónica de un conflicto anunciado,” Expansión Política, 2019.
86. Ibid.
87. Elizabeth Melimopoulos, “Mexico’s National Guard: What, who and when,” Al Jazeera, June 30, 2019.
88. Christopher Sherman, “Mexican Officials Blame Federal Police Strike On Opposition,” ABC News, 2019.
89. “Ley de la Guardia,” 2019 text available: http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/ref/lgn.htm.
90. Pocoroba, (Re)activación de la guardia nacional en México.
91. Interview with Alejandro Hope conducted November 25, 2019 in Mexico City.
92. The interview is available via the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzeJqILqjk4.
93. Data brought up in the same interview.
94. Interview with gendarmerie expert 2.
95. Guardia Nacional: a un año de su puesta en operación.” Presented by Causa en Común. Available at: http://causaencomun.org.mx/beta/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/202906_GN_versio%CC%81n-larga.pdf.
96. Vizcaíno, Gendarmería.