The Ministry of Public Security and Citizen Protection published this afternoon in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) the reforms that give the Army command of the National Guard, a security body designed under civilian command and now managed entirely by the Armed Forces.
In an evening edition this Friday with a single item, the Official Gazette of the Federation disclosed the “Decree amending, adding and repealing various provisions of the Organic Law of the Federal Public Administration; of the National Guard Law; of the Organic Law of the Mexican Army and Air Force, and of the Law of Promotions and Rewards of the Mexican Army and Air Force, in Matters of National Guard and Public Security”.
Legislative changes approved in less than a weekfirst in the Chamber of Deputies and then in the Senate, in what is known by the English term “fast-track”, implying the speed of the decision.
The reform – which is actually a series of reforms to various laws, as expressed in the title of the decree published in the DOF – determines that the general who heads the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) will also be the head of the National Guard. This Secretariat, according to the reform, will be responsible for the field and executive operation of the security body, which is deployed throughout the national territory.
The institutional design of the National Guard has been a new battlefield between President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the political-electoral opposition, and citizen activism.
For the president, a National Guard under the command of the Army —contrary to the original design of the Guard as a civilian body— is the only way to maintain a minimum of public security in the country, involved in a war of organized crime cartels that has left 340,000 dead since 2006.
For the opposition and citizen activism, a National Guard under the command of the Armed Forces is the confirmation of the militarization of the country, a sign of the political power of the Army in Mexico.
