That is why it was agreed that elements of that institution will protect the outer perimeter of the Chamber, while within it will be the personnel of the Protection and Security Directorate, who in previous legislatures were in charge of the security of the buildings, parking lots and their accesses, the ones that will do those tasks.
“The personnel of the National Guard will be vigilant for demonstrations, and particularly, to protect the safety of those who leave or enter the San Lázaro facilities, particularly at night; We are going to have a protocol, including, so that they are stationed in the Metro and in the places where mass transport is approached and in the surrounding streets, ”creel announced.
“When they enter the facilities to do their cleaning or rest, they will have to disarm, enter unarmed and, if there is any situation other than what I am informing you of, I have asked the Secretary General Graciela Báez to inform me so that that I have information in real time of any situation that varies from this protocol”, he explained.
Meanwhile, he said that a space will be set up inside San Lázaro for members of the National Guard to rest and clean up, an infrastructure that was supposed to be built since last May, according to the agreement of the Political Coordination Board (Jucopo), which allocated little more than six million pesos for that infrastructure, consisting of bedrooms, kitchenette, bathrooms.
Since 2014, the Chamber of Deputies has external personnel for security. But at that time it was Federal Police personnel, who carried out patrols and searched for explosives, but did not monitor entrances and exits.
Military in Congress
On August 10, the bench of deputies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) denounced the “invasion” of the National Guard in San Lázaro, in violation of the legislative precinct, this in the framework of the dispute that the tricolor had with Morena for the presidency of the Government Commission, from which they sought to remove the PRI member Alejandro Moreno.
The elements of the Guard guarded a meeting of that commission in which, according to the PRI, eight deputies “self-appointed” secretaries of that legislative group to hold an “illegal” session that sought to remove him.
“We demand kicks from the San Lázaro guard. That they go fight against drug traffickers,” the tricolor bench demanded on Twitter that day to the former president of the board of directors, the Morenoite Sergio Gutiérrez Luna.
Since the beginning of the ordinary period, on February 1, when the General Congress met in the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro, with the presence of 500 deputies and 128 senators, the militarization inside the chamber was denounced by Senator Emilio Álvarez Icaza, from the Plural Group.
That day not only the National Defense Music Band attended, but also a Monumental War Band, in which the military, inside the legislative plenary session, performed honors to the flag dressed in their camouflage combat uniform.
The following day Senator Álvarez Icaza made the complaint in the Senate. “In the framework of the militarization that we are experiencing, the presence of a military band yesterday at the General Congress facility, the honors to the flag for a presence of the Army is a very reprehensible message, because in the legislature, inside, in the plenary, is accompanied by those symbols of the normalization of the presence of the armed forces in national life is a worrying message”, he said.
I express my rejection to continue with the normalization of the presence of the #FFAA in Mexican civil life.
There are already 246 civilian activities handed over to the military in this @GobiernoMXand now even in the plenary session of the Congress of the Union, yesterday in @Mx_Diputados. pic.twitter.com/AUdr1r0ewS
– Emilio Álvarez Icaza Longoria (@EmilioAlvarezI)
February 2, 2022
Congress is the civil space par excellence and it is not appropriate to normalize it like this, he said. “There is no precedent, if there have been gangs of war, but not within the plenary session,” he said.
There are already 246 civil tasks delivered to military personnel and “we cannot send from Congress a message of normalization of the use of the military forces as if nothing had happened. I refuse to accept the message that the military is at the center of civil power, which is parliament, as if nothing had happened”.
In the honors to the flag that are rendered in the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies, military personnel dressed in gala uniforms usually participate, not the combat uniform with camouflage, as happened last February, although the military personnel deployed on that occasion carried a band on the shoulder with the marking of Plan DN III, that is, the one used for the deployment of support to civilians.
As reported on that occasion, it was the former president of the National Defense Commission, Ricardo Villarreal, a PAN member, who invited the Monumental War Band and the National Defense Music Band.
