few days before, links published an article by Rubén Aguilar Valenzuela, entitled “Tensions in the Army.” The author assures that there is a group of retired generals and senior military commanders who are dissatisfied with the management that President López Obrador has given to the armed forces.
According to Aguilar Valenzuela, among the military leaders, it causes special discomfort that the Secretary of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, weighs loyalty to the president above fidelity to the Constitution. He is also upset that the president is using the military to carry out tasks beyond his nature and that he is creating a business elite within the military, which has the potential to corrupt the military.
Cosgaya Rodríguez’s tweet and Aguilar Valenzuela’s article are fundamental, since they demolish the —false— image of the Army as a monolithic and homogeneous entity that persists among those of us who are not military. Like the myth of the incorruptible Army, the fiction of the eternally disciplined and completely uniform Army is a total exaggeration, the product of the ignorance of the armed forces, which in turn is a consequence of the closedness, opacity and lack of accountability of military institutions.
On the other hand, The country published the report “What happens in the Army stays in the Army: the hell of denouncing sexual abuse in the Mexican Armed Forces.” There is narrated the journey of a sergeant who denounced that she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of an Army colleague, but far from receiving institutional support, she has been marginalized, mistreated and revictimized by other soldiers.
Rarely have we seen an outreach publication that so clearly portrayed the Army’s misogyny, impunity, and opacity. It is equally rare to read the direct testimony of a soldier and feel so closely the fear that military elements have of reprisals against them when they “violate” military discipline.
I consider it positive that these issues are beginning to be discussed and that, little by little, the media, opinion leaders and society in general are paying more attention to what is happening within the Army.
For a long time, this was the exclusive interest of some academics, journalists, activists and non-governmental organizations. For a long time, society and the media were stunned by the militarization of various functions of civil government. For a long time, the myths of the incorruptible Army, always reliable and “different from the rest of Latin America,” have prevailed in Mexico.
It’s time we started looking at the military in nuances. I have been a staunch critic of its use in tasks unrelated to national security and I have pointed out the trail of violence and human rights violations that its deployment has left.
However, I also recognize the Army and Navy as vital institutions for the national security of our country and I am aware that, at times, they perform the tasks that are asked of them more quickly and effectively than many of their civilian peers. Likewise, I know that many soldiers carry out their work out of the true conviction that they are doing good for Mexico, which is no small thing in a country like ours.
