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Why Is Mexico’s Security Strategy Failing?

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During the administration of President Andres Manuel López Obrador, Mexico has struggled with historically high levels of homicides. On September 22, 2022 during a morning press conference López Obrador faced off with journalist Jorge Ramos over his government’s track record of dealing with violence. Ramos held up a placard showing that AMLO’s government has overseen more murders than any other administration in modern Mexican history. López Obrador chose to deny and deflect. “I don’t agree with you,” he countered. López Obrador continues to remind voters about the violence Mexico experienced during the presidency of Felipe Calderon (2006-2012.) He does not mention, however, that his own government has overseen a significantly higher level of violence. According to data from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), the country recorded 42,676 murders during the first three years of Calderon’s government, a time when Mexico was considered to be “at war” with its drug cartels. Under López Obrador, the government has promoted the slogan “hugs not bullets” and also embraced a massive expansion of Calderon’s militarized security strategy. What has not disappeared, however, is the violence. Mexico has recorded 109,059 murders between 2019 and the end of 2021, during the first half of López Obrador’s sexenio. In order to discuss the issue of violent crime in Mexico, I reached out to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Nathaniel Parish Flannery: How would you sum up President López Obrador's security strategy?

Vanda Felbab-Brown: I’d describe it as, “Let’em Sort It.” The López Obrador administration has essentially abdicated any effort to develop a law enforcement policy to counter criminal violence and criminal takeover of legal economies and institutions in Mexico and meaningfully counter drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States. Perhaps the Mexican government is hoping that if left unchallenged, Mexican criminal groups will redivide their turfs and violence will subside. Yet as the bipolar war between the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación rages on in Mexico, entangles local criminal groups, the highly violent and unstable Mexican criminal market remains out of control – out of control of the criminal groups and out of control of the government. The Mexican government has failed to respond to even egregious displays of criminal brazenness, intimidation, and ambition – narco-blockades, narco-convoys, assassination hits on top government officials, seizures of cities and rural areas, and criminal-groups-driven displacement of local populations. But while the Mexican government and its security forces remain passively on the sidelines, often watching violence playing out in front of their eyes and under their noses with instructions not to respond with force, the criminal groups actively seek to take over legal economies in Mexico and intimidate, infiltrate, and corrupt local, state, and national institutions. Meanwhile, violence levels remain bad: 121,000 people in Mexico killed during former president Felipe Calderón’s six years; and 157,000 during former President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration. In the first four years of the López Obrador administration, the death toll is already 130,000 and the trends are for homicides to surpass the Peña Nieto years.

Parish Flannery: Overall, what grade would you give Mexico's President Lopez Obrador for the security strategy he's implemented?

Felbab-Brown: Overall, I’d give López Obrador a “D” for his security policies. The Mexican government does not have a security strategy, particularly a law enforcement strategy; it has security passivity. The empowering of the Mexican military far more so than was done by his predecessors - the Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto administrations – does not equal a security strategy.

Despite his campaign promise to strengthen police forces in Mexico and find a way to return the military to the barracks, as president López Obrador has done the opposite, even as he essentially ended the vast majority of law enforcement operations. In his first year, López Obrador shredded the Federal Police, the most competent law enforcement agency in Mexico. The capacity of the National Guard the López Obrador administration began building in its stead remain weak and inadequate, and the López Obrador administration has returned to its first-year plan to place the National Guard under the command of the military. Meanwhile, President López Obrador has awarded the Mexican military with all kinds of economic contracts and vastly expanded its role in the administration of government institutions and implementation of all kinds of public policies.

The López Obrador administration’s early effort to reform and strengthen local police forces in Mexico, something the country badly needs and successive administrations failed to undertake, fell flat, and the Mexican government once again completely abandoned the effort. Instead of reforming subnational police forces, it blames them. Furthermore, the Lopez Obrador administration never elaborated in detail what it means by public health policy, though presumably treatment, harm reduction, & prevention of drug use.

Parish Flannery: What is one reform or policy solution you would like to see Mexico implement to help reduce violent crime or improve public security?

Felbab-Brown: A well-designed law enforcement strategy is essential in Mexico, just like in any other country. But it is completely lacking in Mexico. The current Mexican government or the next Mexican administration must return implementing a meaningful law enforcement strategy. That will need to include local policing components – and thus, federal support for state and local police reform and operations, including the strengthening of the budgets of these institutions that the López Obrador administration gutted.

But the federal government must lead in countering and rolling back the criminal takeover of people, territories, legal economies, and government institutions in Mexico, including and importantly through law enforcement. Targeting should refocus away from so-called high-value decapitation strategies to targeting of the middle operational layer of criminal groups, including their financiers, money-launderers, fixers, and logistical operations. Any targeting must include planning of how strikes could cause violence flare-ups and should preposition forces to prevent that. Instances of narco-peace should be seized to build up local and state police forces so power can shift from criminals to government institutions, instead of violence suppression remaining fully at the discretion of criminal groups.

An effective federal police force will need to be created. Countering the production and smuggling of fentanyl and increasingly its distribution in Mexico will also need to be elevated.

Power needs to be returned to the Mexican state to build up its deterrence capacity vis-à-vis criminal groups. Mexican institutions need accountability. The Mexican people need public safety.

Additional reading: How Is China Involved In Organized Crime In Mexico?

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