Listening to Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos complain about the treatment both the Army and the Navy are getting for carrying out drug-related police work definitely grabbed the news in Mexico last week during a press conference Thursday that was also attended by the Armed Forces top brass.
“What we need is efficient and well-trained police corps with the competence to look after the problems which, by law, is their competence to look after. The net balance is that 10 years after it was determined to reconstruct police departments nationwide, the fact is that we still do not deem them reconstructed,” he said.
The Armed forces, he emphasized, are not trained to do police work. “I have to say it, we did not ask to be out there doing police work. We don’t feel at home doing it. None of us the officials present here went to military school to chase after criminals.”
General Cienfuegos underlined that because soldiers are not policemen many a criminal who is now defended under due process is going scot free because his human rights were violated by soldiers who might have used torture with them and are defended by civil rights non-government organizations.
His comments provoked an array of reactions regarding the status of Army and Navy officials who in doing police work have been accused and even jailed for human rights violations. The problem is with the law regulating military behavior and the military is being treated as regular police by civil courts.
Immediately there was a reaction in Congress to reactivate laws guaranteeing the rights of soldiers or do what should have never been done in the first place, that is, pulling armed soldiers out of the barracks to have them do police work.
“I’ll be the first to raise my hand in acceptance if they tell us to go back to the barracks,” General Cienfuegos told reporters.
Among the number of reactions was that of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who admitted that indeed the streets are not the right place for soldiers, but that “the security and justice to Mexicans is today the largest challenge of our era, the one the requires the most attention, coordination, competence and professionalism.”
Only the Armed Forces have that competence, he said, and they will continue to carry out public security chores as long as there are no efficient police departments.
In Congress there was an immediate reaction from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to re-launch existing legislation to give the Armed Forces more legal protection particularly in the case of soldiers participating in the struggle against drug traffickers.
Opposition parties, however, claimed that it’s been the PRI that has blocked proposed legislation to give soldiers leeway in actions against armed civilians always keeping in mind, a member of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) said, that “their participation in this struggle is temporary.”
National Action Party (PAN) deputy and former National Security committee leader Miguel Alcántara mentioned that during the past president Felipe Calderón administration (2006-12) it was the PRI who prevented PAN legislators from revamping laws regulating the juridical framework regulating the military, which for military in the barracks, not out on the streets. Alcántara added that “it is time for the PRI to pick up proposals it once blockaded.”
One problem with the 2008-09 legislation was the Mérida Initiative signed by Calderón with the U.S. Embassy in which the military got monies destined to police for fight against drug traffickers but in fact, the legal framework was never amended.
The overall reaction towards General Cienfuegos’ complaint was one of sympathy as in general Mexicans get frightened watching soldiers wielding .223 caliber assault rifles and .50 caliber machine guns mounted on pickups patrolling the streets. It’s scary, to be mild about it.
And indeed soldiers don’t want to be there but as long as the municipal, state and federal governments fail to have well-paid, honest and educated policemen on the streets, President Peña Nieto said, the Army and the Navy soldiers will continue to do police work, even without a juridical framework.
