“The security policy fights crime based on the law”

Miguel Angel Velazquez

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 26, 2022, p. 14

Forceful, but without shrillness, The Undersecretary of Public Security, Ricardo Mejía Berdeja, warns: For the first time in the history of the country, a government submits its security strategy to the Legislative Powerand denies passivity in the prosecution of the crime: There are between 1,200 and 1,300 detainees every day, but we have not wanted to dramatize the security policy.

-The saying of hugs, not bullets has been confused and used to weaken the strategy, do you agree?

-There has been an attempt to caricature or misrepresent the ideal of the President, although deep down everyone knows that the intention is to build a more fraternal society in which violence is gradually reduced. As Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez has rightly said, hugs, not bullets it does not mean to be crossed of the arms.

The best example is Aguililla, in Michoacán, which has already recovered and people today live normally. What would we have come to with Calderón’s strategy? To a massacre, moreover, a sterile massacre. There is no criminal group in the country that has not had significant effects both in its economy and in its weapons and in the mobility of the drugs it handles.

Mejía Berdeja now touches on the subject of the National Guard and the permanence of the armed forces in the fight against crime.

–It seems to me extremely hypocritical that there are political or government actors who, on the one hand, deny the Army and our armed forces and, on the other hand, ask – when they do not implore – that these forces act in their places in matters of security.

Currently, there is no state force that has the capacity to maintain security in your entity. Is not sufficient. In most states, the federal force is greater than the local force, and the federal force is key. We are talking about the Army in entities that are not coastal, also about the coastal states where there is a very important presence of the Navy, and also the coordination with the Secretary of Security with the peace tables.

They (state governments) necessarily require the National Guard, so it surprises us that when it comes to supporting legal or constitutional decisions, there is partisan haggling.”

-Well, but if the armed forces do not repress, what is the use of continuing to arm the Army?

-The construction of peace is very important, that is, not only having a security force, with intelligence, with social programs, but also with crime prevention programs, that is a challenge because it is about recovering our youth and prevent them from falling into the hands of crime or themselves being part of the crime.

Having the armed forces in the streets is important because they are a dissuasive force, which serves so that the Mexican State has a territorial implantation.

He warns that the voids left by the absence of the armed forces on the streets are filled by members of organized crime.

-I mean that the Federal Police never had a national presence. It was a reaction force. They did not have barracks nor were they deployed as the National Guard does today throughout the country. That meant that when there was a problem in Michoacán, they sent the federals, or in Guerrero, depending on the problem, they stayed to live in the hotels, and even stayed on duty. It was an embarrassment to the institution itself. Now it is a matter of them being throughout the country, that there is a force that has training, that legitimately has weapons to prevent the growth of organized crime and that they take advantage of the gaps created by the absence of the government force.

-If the state governments do not have control over the armed forces that work in their territories, do not their power be somewhat curtailed?

-I don’t see it that way, because in the scheme of the security strategy there are working groups chaired by the governors, in which the strategy is set; Hence, the discourse of militarization –in quotes– is discredited, because this also does not mean that governments do not have state police that do depend totally on them. No governor, no municipal president, can relinquish his responsibility for security.

But are we still at war with the narco?

-There is no longer a war against drug trafficking. What there is is a security policy that combats criminal activities based on the law, and the State cannot be confused with organized crime, because they kill and commit crimes. The State cannot do the same to submit it.

-And the social programs, what importance do they have in this fight?

-It is very important, because in a first stage it is essential to contain and prevent it from continuing to grow, but I can tell you that in the medium term it will be essential to stabilize the levels of decline in crime.

Coahuila and politics

Prepared to break with a chain chieftain 18 years old, which has cost Coahuila zero infrastructure works and an indebtedness that requires the payment of 6 billion pesos a year, Ricardo Mejía Berdeja awaits the legal time with only one decision: to become Morena’s candidate for the government of his condition.

He says it like this: They are not wrong (those who in political circles consider him the strongest contender for Coahuila). The political times have been approaching in my land. Next June there will be elections. The countrymen, the friends and the companions of the movement every day encourage us more to participate when the legal times come. We see it with great sympathy, we are thinking of definitely participating.

The current Undersecretary of Federal Public Security knows about the political entrails of that border state, he warns that the clan de los Moreira has dominated the entity for the last 18 years with the solid base of the state’s teachers, but “I already have a dissident teachers’ movement that is determined to change the political life of the state, as well as the political life trade union, and that he is fully committed to us.

This was not seen until recently, here in Coahuila, because there was a paralyzing fear, but today people are more encouraged. We are also seeing it in other sectors where more are joining every day, and we are not only talking about the people of Morena or the 4T, there are PRI members willing to take the step to break with the moreirato, PAN members who do not agree with the alliance with the PRI. An increasingly solid movement is brewing and that is why we are very confident that this movement will benefit us.

Without revenge, but far from impunity, the northerner warns that although Coahuila is not on the list of the most violent, instead he denounces the looting of state coffers. “There is an impressive debt that compromises public finances, due to loans that were contracted illegally, with false decrees and, even so, the banks granted them loans.

Let’s see what really happened. I would talk about creating a truth commission to determine the scope of the debt, those responsible, the possibilities of being able to substantially lighten the weight of the liabilities that the state has and, based on that, undertake the corresponding actions of a administrative, fiscal and even criminal and, at the time, speak clearly with the financial organizations that were responsible for granting this type of credit without support and that turned into a snowball that affects the state.

Accusa: “I think that money was used for political campaigns outside of Coahuila.

It is necessary to break with the Gordian knots that the state has, something that people are seeing in me, and that is that I did not arrive with any commitment to that group (the Moreiras), I would represent a clear break with the model with which has governed, and this represents hope for the people, right?