A week ago Mexico Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda delivered a thunderous speech demanding from Congress to shape up laws regulating the presence of both the Army and the Navy in police duties combatting drug-trafficking. That speech is still echoing with a diversity of points of view on its meaning.
For both Chambers of Congress, it was a warning shot that legislation some solons tried to pass as long as 10-years ago are still in limbo. For a moment this past week it was considered to hold an extra period to deliberate on the issue, but finally there was consensus to postpone it for January as the new law requires a constitutional amendment, and that will take time. Also, they will then decide which Chamber will issue a preliminary constitutional amendment-bill.
So, Viva Mexico, it’s mañana in Congress once again.
At the public opinion level just about every pundit I read has a say on the subject, but of the dozens of articles pertaining to boots on the streets, the two written by women (Denise Dresser and Amparo Casar) are both the most poignant, outspoken and politically incising in the nation.
In Reforma newspaper, Denise Dresser, a radical leftist claims General Cienfuegos literally announced a coup d’état and imposed himself over civilian command of the Armed Forces and is now controlling the streets. By admitting to hearing the Defense Secretary’s opinion on the legal status of the Army and Navy, Dresser called President Enrique Peña Nieto “pusillanimous” for letting the general talk down to him.
She salaciously says that General “Milfuegos” (Cienfuegos means one hundred fires, and milfuegos means one thousand fires) “is threatening with a military mutiny if the military is not given the constitutional coverage they require to continue on the streets.”
Summing up, Dresser says that General Cienfuegos wants a carte blanche for the military to get away with torture and human rights violations as Cienfuegos said that the military was not trained to do police work.
Her article is widely circulating in the web.
Amparo Casar is not as wacky as Denise Dresser and in Excelsior (both write for leading Mexico City newspapers) interprets General Cienfuegos’ stance as a tough talking one but questions what has taken both the president and Congress so long to react as to coming up with a law.
“Ten years ago it was unimaginable that the Army would be in a systemic way permanently on the streets doing a job that does not correspond to them and for which there is no juridical backup.”
Casar points to Congress for the blame of having the Armed Forces doing police work and quotes Cienfuegos saying that things are this way because those who should’ve done it did not do it and are not doing it and because “they never allotted a budget for this issue.”
But she concludes that “I would not like to continue hearing this, or another Defense Secretary, saying these words in the media. But General Cienfuegos is coming out pushed by circumstances and his words don’t lack truth or reason.”
Denise Dresser thinks that a law is not going to contain the military to being soldiers, not police. She put out some official numbers.
“After years of war, there are 52,000 soldiers spread out, 84 regional operations to ‘reduce violence,’ the deployment of 75 checkpoints, 213,000 dead, a horrifying lethality index in which the Army kills eight against one wounded, 12,408 complaints before the National Human Rights Commission.”
Her list is longer but the above pretty much points out to the level of involvement the Armed Forces have in what civil authorities long ago considered a lost war in which the main consumer market continues to be the United States.
Both Casar and Dresser disagree. For Casar, the answer is in Congress but for Dresser, President Peña Nieto is using the Army to protect his administration “because instead of sending back the Army to the barracks, the government is allowing the barrackization of the nation.”
