Will a Larger Military Role Harm Democracy?

CARLISLE, PA. — In the past year and a half, the Mexican military has assumed more and more responsibility in both its international and domestic affairs. This sea change in role, however justified in light of Mexico’s growing narco-trafficking, insurgency and violent crime, has prompted anxiety and concern some quarters. Will the military’s fight against these afflictions undermine the principles of democracy and human rights?

The Mexican armed forces’ relations with their American counterparts have undergone dramatic change. In October 1995, Secretary of Defense William J. Perry made an official visit to Mexico. Six months later, his Mexican counterpart, Gen. Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, reciprocated. On that occasion, an agreement was signed providing for the transfer of 20 UH1H “Huey” helicopters to the Mexican Air Force, with perhaps 50 more to be delivered this year. It also provided for the training of Mexican soldiers in counternarcotics tactics at Fort Bragg.

At the same time, the two sides have engaged in talks on jointly combating the drug trade. The White House has created a special high-level task force to plan “coordinated and urgent” action with Mexico to curtail drug trafficking. Mexico has requested a $70-million package of high-tech military equipment, including advanced satellite-radar systems capable of tracking aircraft smuggling South American cocaine through Mexico to the United States.

These developments are new on two counts. First, in the past 50 years, the Mexican political leadership has kept the military insulated from the outside world, particularly from U.S. influence. Second, Washington had given such equipment to Mexican police units combating drug smugglers. Now the military, especially the air force, is becoming much more involved in drug interdiction. Late last year, an army general was appointed head of the National Institute to Combat Drugs, the counterpart to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Mexican military is also assuming major new policing functions. For more than two years, the armed forces have been closely working with the Federal Judicial Police in Chihuahua. In late 1995, the government filled the top command of the Federal Judicial Police with army officers. Beyond this, there has been a sweeping shakeup of the Mexico City police. A brigadier general has been put in charge; dozens of police commanders have been replaced by military officers.

The reason for a larger military role in domestic law enforcement is not hard to fathom. In 1996, the number of reported crimes in Mexico was 35% higher than in 1994. There were some 1,500 kidnappings, more than in any other Latin American country except Colombia, which led the world. In Mexico City alone, during the first quarter of 1996, there were 15,893 car thefts, 7,155 street robberies, 2,200 burglaries, 334 rapes and 314 homicides. People feel enormous personal insecurity and are frustrated with the government’s ineffectiveness.

Meanwhile, the armed forces have been increasingly drawn into the novelty of counterinsurgency operations, something for which they were totally unprepared. After the surprise 1994 Zapatista offensive, the army created a special Rainbow Task Force to deal with the crisis in Chiapas. Special-force groups were set up and trained to conduct anti-guerrilla operations. The air force created airborne units versed in machine-gun strafing and rocket-launching operations in support of ground troops.

While these changes may have helped stop the fighting in Chiapas, they have not prevented the spread of violence to other states. Last August, a guerrilla group calling itself the Revolutionary People’s Army launched a wave of coordinated attacks across southern Mexico. Once again, the military was caught by surprise. Since then, however, it has launched counterinsurgency actions in half a dozen states, even drawing troops away from counternarcotics and policing operations (especially in Chihuahua) to do so.

Not surprisingly, these expanding missions have been accompanied by increases in manpower and budget. Since 1994, troop strength has increased by roughly 15%, to about 180,000. In 1996, military spending grew by 16%, to $2 billion (still one of the lowest in the world on a per-capita basis). In addition, President Ernesto Zedillo has created a national security council, assembling military commanders along with Justice and Interior ministers to make security decisions. Increasingly, the military is influencing policy in domestic security.

Zedillo’s outreach to the military has less to do with drugs than with the insurgencies. Nonetheless, the Mexican president, whose father is a general, and his predecessor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, identified narco-trafficking as the primary threat to Mexican national security. Some 50% to 70% of the cocaine, up to 80% of the marijuana and 20% to 30% of the heroin imported into the United States comes from or through Mexico. In 1994, Mexico earned between $10 billion and $30 billion from narcotics. The same year, the country’s largest export, oil, earned $7 billion.

This money goes everywhere. It is recycled into businesses, both legitimate and illegitimate. The cartels have so penetrated the Mexican state and socioeconomic structures that they have effectively subverted most of the country’s major institutions. Congress and the executive branch, the courts, state governors, banks, businesses, the police--all have, to one extent or another, been corrupted. The Federal Judicial Police is so corrupted it is no longer possible to distinguish between them and the criminals they are supposed to apprehend.

This has fueled a debate over whether “Colombianization”--a destructive state of all-out war between government and drug cartels--has begun in Mexico. Until recently, at least, nothing comparable to what happened in Colombia in the early 1990s has occurred in Mexico. It hasn’t because the Mexican government did not wage war against the cartels the way the Colombians had, thus there was no orchestrated retaliation or bloodshed. Will the incipient “militarization” of the war against drugs in Mexico change that?

It is hard to say. Much depends on how aggressively the war is pursued. Mexico’s track record suggests that words are not always followed by action. Similarly, much depends on the armed forces’ ability to withstand the cartels’ attempts to penetrate and co-opt them. In the past, the narcos could simply buy off the police and the politicians. If they do that with the military, which has a comparatively “clean” record, they will continue business more or less as usual. Needless to say, this danger of narco-corruption has been one of the reasons why Mexican military leaders have long been reluctant, much like their counterparts in the hemisphere, to become more deeply involved in counternarcotics. Another issue is human rights. As the military becomes more deeply involved in counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations, and in direct support to the police, there may be an increase in military violence. Along with the legitimate uses of force, there may be abuses. There have already been human-rights violations in Chiapas, Guerrero and other states where anti-guerrilla sweeps have occurred.

In most democracies, the military serves a secondary purpose of supporting civilian authority when the police are incapable of handling challenges to public security. It is always a reluctant role (witness the Brazilian army’s operation in the favelas of Rio), but it is constitutional. The real question is: Will the military make a difference in restoring security and public confidence and will the institutions of justice become effective and accountable?*