Antonio Baranda/ Reform Agency
Tuesday, January 24, 2023 | 13:04
CDMX.- The National Guard (GN), a military security force created in the present Administration, has worn itself out due to the functions assumed and the political use to which it is being subjected, assured the National Citizen Observatory (ONC).
In the study titled “Four lost years in terms of security,” the organization warns that the use and presence of the GN for “any matter” does not deter or prevent the commission of crimes or administrative offenses.
“With criteria that do not correspond to the crime incidence figures or the presence of organized crime, a wide deployment has been carried out in the country,” he said.
“77 thousand 516 members of the Guard are assigned to state coordinations and are employed for tasks as diverse as fighting fuel theft, stopping migratory flows and monitoring the Mexico City subway.”
On January 12, after a train crash that claimed the life of one person and incidents that Mexico City described as atypical, the federal government assigned 6,000 members of the National Guard for security in the Metro, a deployment that was seen as the “militarization” of their facilities.
“This deployment has served to show the inability of the institution. There is no element carrying out investigation, prevention, social proximity or reaction functions, but there are 92,586 assigned to ‘unspecified operational’ functions, that is, willing to attend any matter or occurrence”, is added in the document.
‘Security is on pins’
Public security in Mexico is held in pins due to the absence of results in the reduction of crime and violence, the null planning and decision-making outside the law, the study points out.
In the document, presented this Tuesday, it is argued that, even though the authorities insist that “we are doing very well”, the crime incidence data and the evaluation of institutional performance show the opposite.
For example, it is documented that during the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador the rate of 11 crimes has reached its historical maximum: intentional homicide and business robbery in 2019; femicide in 2021; extortion, drug dealing and family violence in 2022, among others.
“Despite the ‘change in strategy’ of the federal government, criminal organizations have not only remained, but their operation has evolved to the detriment of the well-being of the population,” the organization warns.
“Two criminal organizations have strengthened their operations and acquired greater influence in the country: the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel.” The violence and health crisis generated by fentanyl has been practically invisible for the last few years.”
For the Observatory, the various reforms in the area of public security have theoretically been relevant, but the results have been minimal or null in some areas and the promised Mexican recipe for pacification has been surpassed by reality.
The document also considers that there is an emergency in gender violence, due to the increase in cases of extreme violence, in particular, femicides, as well as homicides against relevant social actors such as journalists, environmental and human rights defenders.
“The planning instruments lack an adequate design, which reveals a lack of security strategy on the part of the federal government. There is a weak diagnosis. They do not clearly and delimitedly identify the problems they will address, nor their causes, effects or population aim”.
When presenting the study, the director of the ONC, Francisco Rivas, affirmed that the Government reached the last third of its administration with a balance characterized by institutional wear, centralization of decisions, greater budgetary fragility, fewer political counterweights and abundant rhetoric.
“The federal government’s security strategy has advanced without having real political counterweights, on the contrary, the cherry tide has promoted the legislative and federative legitimacy necessary for its implementation, beyond its results. Despite this, the country is experiencing critical moments of violence and insecurity,” he said.
The Observatory recommended, among other things, opening channels for citizen participation and building bridges with academia to build police innovation alternatives focused on the local level.
Likewise, to recover the planning process as an exercise in which the objectives of the security policy are reflected; guarantee the autonomy of the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic; address legitimate feminist demands; and formulate anti-addiction policies that are not founded on prejudice.